Car passes the test for her Greek mom

Young engineer doesn’t get the vehicle she wants, but ends up with the one she’s now come to love

A few years back, during a road trip in Quebec, Lucia Iannantuono and her sister found themselves on a lonely rural road. It was a 60-km stretch of gravel. There was no cellphone service. And the gas gauge on her 2017 Subaru Impreza was dipping dangerously low.

“I was like, ‘Do not break down now!’ ” she recalls.

To save every last drop of gas, she turned the air conditioner off.

The car did not fail her. And the legendary Quebec road trip became one of many fond, if not hair-raising tales, from a car that refuses to let her down.

Surprisingly, this steady Subaru, an age-defying shimmer of Cerulean blue, wasn’t the ride she had in mind when she first started shopping for one.

In 2017, as a young mechanical engineer, Iannantuono landed an internship at an aluminum plant in Etobicoke. She had moved to Hamilton from her family home in Bracebridge. But the commute to Etobicoke was still daunting.

“I took the internship and I mapped out the transit route, and it was going to take me, like, three hours to get there by transit because of all the connections,” she says.

So Iannantuono set her heart on getting a car. Not just any car.

“I was like, ‘I’m going to get my dream car.’ And my dream car, like all good Italians, was the Fiat 500.” She found a used model on Kijiji. “I was like, ‘Yes, this is what I’m going to do.’ ”

Her parents had other ideas. “My mom, who is Greek, absolutely panicked. ‘You’re going to die.

It’s a death trap. A truck is going to hit you. You’re going to be crumpled into a million pieces.’ ”

“‘Therefore, we’ve already bought you a car.’ And I was, like, ‘What?’ ” Hello Subaru!

It didn’t take long for the stalwart Impreza to find a parking spot very close to Iannantuono’s heart.

It became her daily commuter, her faithful road tripper, and even a bit of a matchmaker.

“It was a very, very crazy time in my life,” she recalls.

“I was getting up at four in the morning, driving in to start my work at six in Etobicoke, coming back with the rush hour traffic to Hamilton, and then going rock climbing in the evenings, and then meeting up with this guy at 9 p.m. for a date. And then going to bed by midnight and starting the whole thing all over again.”

The car became a teacher of sorts, as Iannantuono used it to instruct her friends in the fading skill of driving stick (shift).

“It’s an art form that I think a lot of people are not necessarily picking up these days,” she says. “But I think it’s really, like a feat of engineering. I’ve always really, really admired the grace of mechanical components.

“Having all these moving parts is just amazing. Especially if you take a look at really, really old cars and you see the evolution of today.”

Last year, Iannantuono ran as a Green Party candidate in the Hamilton municipal election. While campaigning, her knowledge of cars would open doors.

A committed environmentalist, she would, occasionally, have trouble bringing her green agenda message to the doorstep.

“I was going around and knocking on doors and I’d get somebody’s who’s, like: ‘Oh yeah, Green whatever. I’m not into environmental stuff.’ And then I’d say: ‘Hey, I noticed you’ve got a Mazda RX-8 in the driveway. Is it fun? It’s a rotary engine car. It’s one-of-a-kind to drive. What’s it like to actually own it?’

“I’d talk to this guy for like half an hour about the Mazda RX-8.”

When asked about the unlikely pairing of car culture and the environment, Iannantuono draws from another steady influence in her life: family.

Recently, her dad took her along for a drive on a closed-circuit track.

“While we were there, I was thinking if this is what driving was — a pure hobby for the engineering and the sport of it — we wouldn’t have a problem.

“If it was just for the love of it, it would be OK. I don’t like having a car-centric city. But I do like the car.”

One car in particular.

Her Greek mom didn’t want her to get a Fiat 500, so the Italian girl ended up with the ride she loves