Honk if parts fall off

Almost the Green Bomb (1971 Chevy Nova)

(imagine the car is green, visualize plenty of rust and a decaying paint job)

Back in the mid-80s, when my boyfriend was a poor carpenter and I was an even poorer graduate student, we had this car.  It was a early-70s vintage forest green Chevy Nova.  By the time we got the car, it was totally clapped out.  The seats were completely dished out, the engine sounded like a Singer sewing machine and the shocks were so totally shot that the car shimmied at top speed (around 45 mph).  If that wasn't bad enough, the air conditioning was broken (a real hardship in steamy North Carolina summers) and the radiator leaked.  Wherever we drove, we carried two gallon jugs of water with us to fill up the radiator.  We made sure we filled it up before we left home and topped it off again before starting out on our return journey.  The dashboard had a big crack in it that was held together with a series of butterfly bandages.  The car leaked water so much by the end that, when we would be stopped at red lights, cars pulled up along side of us would honk and point to the water dripping out underneath the car.  We would just smile and give a thumbs up to indicate that we knew the beast was loosing its life's blood. 

I don't remember what finally happened to the green bomb, I think my boyfriend's parents fronted him enough money for a down payment on a pickup truck and the green bomb was surrendered as a trade-in.

I hadn't thought about this car in years until I was watching Wong Kar-Wai's "Happy Together" the other night.  There in the opening scene Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung, the doomed lovers of said film, are driving a similarly decrepit Chevy Nova of the same vintage across the pampas of Argentina.  This part of the film is in B&W, so I can' be sure of the color of the car, but it is dark, dark enough to be forest green.  This car is even more clapped out than the green bomb.  But I have to wonder, what ever happened to that car when my boyfriend traded it in?  Could it have ended up on a ship to Argentina, could Leslie Cheung have driven the same broken down piece of crap that I had driven 10 years previously?  I kept trying to get a look at the dashboard to see if the tell-tale butterfly bandages were holding it together.  Although I can't tell if it is the same car, I would like to think that the amazing wonder car that wouldn't quit, but hardly ran, survived another 10 years and was immortalized in Wong Kar-Wai's masterpiece.  R.I.P. green bomb, wherever you are; you served us well.