FROM SEA ΤΟ SHINING SEA

What better way to shake off the post-pandemic blues than a proper road trip? For one Canadian student, that meant more than 10,000 miles to visit three oceans in a 52-year-old Volvo

- XAVIER THÉRIAULT

For as long as I can remember, my life has been ruled by cars: my first words after "mom" and "dad" were probably "1968 Mustang Fastback". Back then, I was brought up around the idea of making memories with cars: when I was a baby, my dad and I would spend Sunday afternoons driving to shows in our 1984 Volkswagen Westfalia, where we would be surrounded by old cars and the unmistakable smell of high-octane fuel.

As I grew older, my affections turned to Japanese cars thanks to films such as The Fast and the Furious. Every penny from my $8-an-hour part-time job at McDonald's went towards my dream car: a Nissan 240SX. A few days after my 16th birthday, I rounded up all I my cash and bought one, but never got to drive it because the head gasket blew the day I got it - and that's before I discovered the Swiss-cheese frame rails and the non-existent brakes. Unfortunately, at that point my mechanical knowledge was virtually zero, but that would soon change.

You might think the purchase of the Nissan would be a lesson learned, but it only fuelled the fire and my next buy was a 'track modified' 1984 Volvo 240 - which essentially meant that it was unfit for the road. It was on the stiffest set of badly installed coil-overs you could find, and fitted with a tired, fuel-injected B21 engine making 100bhp on a good day, but I loved it.

It was almost always broken, but when it wasn't I was out cruising with friends or making another obnoxious modification. For a high-school student, it was perfect: loud, way too low, and rusty in all the right places. Unfortunately, as I prepared to leave for university I needed something more practical: out went the Volvo, and in came an automatic 2004 Honda Civic.