Using consumer products to mark milestones in your life has the feel of creepy consumerism, but our lives are often framed by the things we buy. Like it or not, our cars, homes, phones, and computers all mediate many of our more meaningful life experiences.

As a selfish retrospective, I am documenting my life in cars. I’m not really a “car person”, as will be made clear by my choices. Even so, listing all the cars I’ve owned does bring back memories of where I was in life at the time. I hold no illusion that this will be interesting or relevant to anyone else. Such is the privilege of publishing my own website.

The executive summary is:

• I’ve owned eight vehicles.
• Half were manual-transmission, half automatic.
• They’ve all been neutral grey, brown, silver, or black, with one wild yellow exception.
• There was a wagon, two compact hatchbacks (still a type I like), four were sedans (or “car-shaped cars” as the ATP hosts would describe them), and one a minivan.
• One burned to the ground in front of me.

1978 Volvo 200 Series (1998-99?)

This car was born the same year as me. The car and I were both around 22 years old by the time it ended up in my hands. Technically, I didn’t own it. It was lent to me for about a year by friends. It felt like it was milled from a single block of steel (or maybe granite). The loan of this car came with one generous but short lesson in how to drive a manual transmission, at the end of which I was handed the keys. It was yellow, and had a cassette player that usually held a copy of Bargainville by Moxy Fruvous.

Driving this car felt a bit like I imagine it feels to captain a super-tanker—you don’t really steer it. Instead, you give directions that are eventually conveyed to wheels, and the body of the car would follow shortly after. It was very yellow.

1991(ish) Volkswagen Fox

This was the first car I really owned myself. I bought it for a few thousand dollars (about a year of income for me at the time). It was built like a (tiny) tank, and was a blast to drive because it was so small.

The day after I bought the car, a friend asked if they could borrow it for a quick errand. I was too nervous and protective of my new possession to let anyone else drive it and declined.

A week or two later, after owning it for only a couple of weeks, the battery came loose and sparked against the underside of the hood. I pulled over, the engine caught fire, and the car burned beyond repair. I wouldn’t have though so much in a car was actually flammable.

From then on, if someone asked to borrow my car, I’ve always said yes.

1989 Toyota Camry

This dark-brown boxy Toyota sedan was probably one of the worst cars I’ve owned. Not because it was poorly made or designed, but because by the time it came to me, it was rusted to near death.

One morning I backed out of my apartment parking space and gently applied the brake. The brake pedal went directly to the floor with absolutely no resistance. There was no braking power at all.

It was a manual transmission with an easily accessible hand-brake, so it was easy to slow to a stop. I then made the poor choice to drive a car with no brakes to the service station, which was only a few blocks away. I kept it below 10Km/h, rode the hand-brake, and kept it in a low gear.

I can still remember the mechanic showing me the metal pipe that held brake fluid. He rubbed it between his fingers and thumb and it literally crumbled to dust.

1991 Dodge Spirit (2002?)

I bought this car with something like CAD $2,500 in cash. I remember it’s oddly powerful V6 engine most of all. Drove it with 3 of 4 hub-caps for most of its life. This was the last vehicle I owned before cars started rounding their corners.

2004 Toyota Echo hatchback

This was the first car that cost more than a few thousand dollars and to this day the only brand new car I’ve ever “owned” (it was leased). The lease was a financially questionable choice for me, but I was fortunate to find someone to buy it out eventually.

This care was a great design. Tiny on the outside, and huge on the inside. Of all the cars I’ve owned, including a full-size sedan and a minivan, this one felt the most spacious when sitting in the drivers’ seat.

It was fuel efficient, had comfortable space for 4 adults, and some storage space behind the rear seat. This car was also born during the transition from CDs to digital audio. It had a stereo with a CD player that could play audio CDs and burned CDs containing MP3s, so I could easily fit 100+songs on a CD.

This car drove me Boston and all around Prince Edward Island.

2000 Toyota Corolla VE Sedan (2005-2010)

I married into this car. It was dependable and solid. I remember when my wife-to-be asked the used-car salesmen what the “VE” indicated, his answer was delightfully honest: “It means it’s the base model.”

I once had a bottle of Drano leak in the back seat that transfigured some of the seat fabric into a hard plastic mass. This car was fine with one child car seat, but two car seats was pushing it.

After this car, we decided it would be the last without air conditioning.

2007 Honda Accord SE Sedan (2010-2015)

The Honda Accord was bought because it had a wide enough back seat to comfortably fit two car seats (and the occasional squished-in niece). It served us well until it was time for a third car seat. This car was solid, comfortable, and reliable with four doors and big trunk.

Buying a ~3-year-old Honda worked so well, we did it again…

2013 Honda Odyssey (2015-)

Finally, with the coming third child, I had the justification I had always needed to own the ultimate driving machine: the minivan. I’ve always been pro-minivan. They are so versatile and practical. This van has plenty of room for our kids and their cousins and friends.

This was a fancier van than we needed or wanted, but when shopping for a used vehicle in a small province, options can be limited. It has air-conditioning, fancy powered sliding doors (that I initially hated, and have grown to appreciate), heated seats, and a weird stereo that can rip up to six CDs and store the music in some mysterious digital form in the van. It even has an internal copy of the Gracenote database of CDs, artists, and tracks.

This van has shuttled a full load too and from the extended-family cottage, and dragged a few Christmas trees home from the lot each winter.

I had hoped that this might be the last internal-combustion-engine vehicle I own, but I’m still waiting on a fully electric minivan – particularly one that doesn’t cost as much as a small house.