Originally Posted by vicente

Hola a todos!!

Carlos might have interpreted it correctly because if someone says "he drives an old banger" it means a jalopy, or beat-up car.

No se, pero tal vez, esta jerga puede signifcar otra cosa. As slang, this might go either way.

Mi primero pensamiento era que estaba diciendo que el coche es excelente. My first impression before reading the translation was that the second person is saying the car is great.

Tal vez, hay otra traducción. Consider the opposite interpretation.

¿Estamos confundiendo la palabra "banger" con "banged-up"? We might be confusing "banger" with "banged-up". Si no me equivoco, chatarra and cacharro significan a beat-up or banged-up car!

This sounds like U.K English to me and in Britain a banger is a firecracker (un petardo) and in the U.S. if you call something a firecracker it means it's hot, cool, great, etc. The second person might actually be praising the car!

"Banger" could be also be slang for bang-up which means great or cool, as in, "we had a bang-up time" or "it's a bang-up car", not a banged-up car.

So maybe it's something like:

-Mira mi coche nuevo, vato!
-Que coche! Es estupendo!

What do you think?

Por favor, corrijan los errores.