Herbie Goes Bananas - Plot

Plot

Loosely picking up where Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo left off, protagonist Pete Stancheck (Stephen W. Burns) has inherited Herbie from Jim Douglas, and travels to Mexico (Puerto Vallarta) with his friend Davy "D.J." Johns (Charles Martin Smith) to retrieve the car. There, they befriend Paco (Joaquin Garay, III), a comically mischievous, orphaned pickpocket.

Pete and D.J. board the Sun Princess, a cruise ship, to Rio de Janeiro to enter Herbie in the Brazil Grand Primeo, while Paco follows hidden in Herbie's cargo compartment. En route they meet an anthropology student named Melissa (Elyssa Davalos) and her extravagant, eccentric aunt Louise (Cloris Leachman), who is trying to find a husband for her niece. When Herbie wreaks havoc on board, Pete pretends to court Melissa, intending that her Aunt Louise will sponsor their race.

Meanwhile, Herbie helps Paco, who has dubbed the car 'Ocho' ('eight' in Spanish, Paco having added the individual numerals in Herbie's number 53; also a pun on the Mexican nickname "vocho" or "bocho".), escape captivity. When the ship's captain Blythe (Harvey Korman) has his costume party wrecked by the boy and car, he puts Herbie on trial and sentences him to be dropped in the sea, whence he is rescued by Paco and disguised as a taxi.

Thereafter follow three villains (John Vernon, Alex Rocco, and Richard Jaeckel) seeking to capture an antique gold disc, and to seize Paco and retrieve some film kept in their wallets; Herbie's matador part in a bullfight; romance between Aunt Louise and Captain Blythe; and bananas initially used to conceal Herbie among farm vehicles traveling to market and later used by Herbie and Paco to stop the villains escaping justice. Ultimately, the villains are captured, and the protagonists re-unite on the Sun Princess to celebrate.