.

Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - A story about a super car powered by banana peels and vegetable juice, which was supposedly undergoing extreme weather testing near Yellowknife, was making the rounds on the Internet Wednesday.

It was an April Fool's joke.

It's tradition among some media outlets to publish a spoof article on April 1, although Yellowknifer didn't print one this year. The last time Yellowknifer did something like that was in 2004 when a story appeared in these pages announcing a bridge across Frame Lake.

The banana car story appeared at msn.ca, headlined: "Exclusive: A Herculean Canadian super car debuts."

It describes a high-performance vehicle built by Hercules, "a new Canadian conglomerate comprised of two natural resources firms (forestry and lumber) and the aerospace industry."

The story also reports "rumour has it that the car is powered by a 1,200-horsepower, 15-cylinder engine, but the real surprise is its fuel system," which powers the car using frying oil, banana peels and nutrient-rich vegetable juice.

The vehicle was photographed driving over snow and ice somewhere near Yellowknife, according to the story.

Bob MacNeil, the business manager at Yellowknife Motors, said he didn't see MSN's banana car story, but he did like the April Fool's story that appeared in the Edmonton Sun on Wednesday.

"The one with the million-dollar machine checking the DNA in doggie doo-doo," said MacNeil. "So everyone who has a dog is going to have to give DNA samples into a database."