http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/group-therapy-tell-us-your-pinto-vega-and-gremlin-stories/and the previous owner comments are always fun... this was my favorite
My friends and I adored Pintos. We loved one very special feature: while most cars then had a generic gas cap concealed behind a little door in the side of the car, the Pinto's was a one-piece unit painted to match the rest of the car body. They were interchangeabl e...and they didn't lock. In a small town with few entertainment options, you had to get creative. And so, soon after Pintos hit the streets in large numbers, just about every one in town had a gas cap of a different color from the rest of the car, thanks to us.
We would go out late at night and harvest one gas cap, then go find another Pinto of a different color, and replace its cap with the first one. We'd move on and swap that one for another...a red one for a blue...blue for lime green...lime green for faux woodgrain. At the end of the evening, we'd go back to where we started and put the last cap on that car (we never left a car without a cap--that would be just rude). Sometimes we'd go back a few times and switch the same car, over and over. Sometimes, after a few exchanges, we'd put back the original cap. Occasionally we'd go back to find that someone had spoiled our fun by putting on a locking cap. But most of the time, the same Pintos and the same odd gas caps were still there, waiting for us to redecorate.
Every once in a while, I still see a Pinto driving around. My eyes go immediately to the gas cap, to see if it matches...to see if we've been there before.