VW Fox

Road trips to Fernie (in British Columbia) have kind of become the road trip of choice for the Christmas holidays. Things started off well on this one fine day in December of 99. I hit the road with Christie and a few friends. All five of us were packed in my ’87 Volkswagon fox. It was a little cool outside so the heat was cranked up.

The car was riding low because of the excessive weight on the roof but everything was cool – the tunes were cranked full blast inside. About 2 hours into the journey the fun started. A little bit of smoke started to rise from the dash – no worries we just kept going. Then the dash really started to billow out smoke and we started to cough from the electrical fumes. This sounded like a good time to pull over (and just in time because smoke filled the car). That is pretty much the time when the steering column and dash started to go up in flames. We tried to throw snow on the fire but it kept going.

Several minutes later someone stopped to help us and we used his fire extinguisher to stop the flame. That put it out but it was a little too late. I just sat there in tears looking at my car. My friends just stood there, laughing their heads off. Christie was running all over the highway grabbing her homework which was blowing around. We got towed to Morse, Saskatchewan where the car was pronounced dead. That was the end of the trip. No snowboarding this year :