IÂ’ve had vehicles that IÂ’ve not been pleased with, but never to quite this degree of hostility.

John McGivney had enough.

He loaded his .380-caliber handgun Friday afternoon, walked out to the parking lot of his Lauderdale-by-the-Sea apartment building and fired four shots into the hood of his ailing Chrysler.

"I'm putting my car out of its misery," McGivney told his landlord.

But the Broward Sheriff's Office didn't see it as a mercy killing. They arrested McGivney on a misdemeanor charge of discharging a firearm in public.

After a night in jail, he was back at his Bougainvilla Isles apartment on $100 bond -- the bullet-riddled 1994 Chrysler LeBaron LX dead in the spot where he left it. McGivney said Tuesday he hasn't tried to start the car and suspects that the four slugs he fired into it probably made his car trouble worse.

McGivney, 64, said the car has been giving him trouble for years and had "outlived its usefulness."

He called the shooting "dumb," and said he'll probably be evicted. But he doesn't regret a thing.

"I think every guy in the universe has wanted to do it," McGivney said. "It was worth every damn minute in that jail."

I'm curious -- which old car does this story make you fondly (o not so fondly) remember?

Mine would have to be that old Plymouth Volare wagon, painted silver-gray.

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