The Lancer

I am a surfer from North Carolina. The southern outer banks have been my stompoing grounds since i rode a morey aussie fluorescent orange boogie board as a kid in the surf off of sportsman's pier in atlantic beach. The waves i came to find in north carolina are only good at certain times and seldomly consistent for more that a few weeks in the fall. It was with this frustrating knowledge that i chose to study for six months in a place I knew would have waves. I enrolled in a study abroad program that sent me to Bond University located in Robina, Queensland on the Gold Coast of Australia.

I had heard australia was the most consistent place for surf anywhere, but I had almost no clue about the geography, and even less of a clue about where my school would be located in respect to good surf. I was blown away when i stepped off the plane and our shuttle to the school winded up the pacific coast highway past Kirra, Currumbin, Rainbow and Burleigh Heads. I asked the driver how the surf had been and he promised me with a wry grin that it was too much for a "seppo" like me to handle. (seppo is australians derogatory term for american it is short for septic tank) I took his word for it, but not for long. Within hours of arriving on the Gold Coast my new friends, (who happened to be surfers from another east coast state with a history of long flat spells and crumbly shore break, New Jersey) and I had boarded a bus and bought boards and were at the beach fighting the whitewater in the tourist infested hellhole known as Surfers Paradise.

It wasn't long before we realized that our best bet to surf every day was to buy a car. In America this might seem like an idea restricted to Rockafellers and children of trust fund love. But as we discovered in our dealings, Australia has no lemon laws. Which means anybody can sell you a piece of crap car that doesn't work and you can't sue them because you should have checked it out yourself before handing over the cash. This also means that you could get a car that would work for peanuts as long as you had somebody who knew something about cars. After some dealings with Australian auto laws and figuring out we would need a car with a surf rack we decided on the car that would become the most dedicated surf machine ever bought for the money. For $800 australian (about $600 american) and some expert auto advice from our Australian friend Lucas, four american students made an investment in out surfing future. Between the four of us that was $200 a piece for transportation all over the gold coast whenever we wanted. No more dragging our boards onto the bus with the other seppo's. No more riding a bike to the beach with boards in hand.

We were fitting right into the culture with the car we had chosen, "The Lancer" The 1977 Chrysler Lancer was a lemon in every way possible. For starters it was bright yellow. It had four doors, a rusted surf rack, a coathanger that served as the only way to pop the hood. The interior was filled with even more character, A sheepskin covered drivers seat that we didn't dare remove for fear of what was under it. Marginally functional seat belts that cost one of my friends a $50 ticket. (that went unpaid) The kicker was the fact that it consistently overheated. The only way to prevent this from happening in a 98 degree australian summer was to run it with the heat on full blast so that it sucked heat away from the engine This made the driver and the shotgun position not so desirable.. Regardless of it's drawbacks, "Th Lancer" was a classic surf vehicle. Devoid of pretention and scoring points with the local women it was the perfect East Oz cruising machine. It had one function; get us to the surf regardless of where it was. Positioned five minutes from Burleigh and an hour from Byron Bay, we were right in the middle of Australia's point break rich Gold Coast. Our surf trips varied from small morning sessions before class to classic weekend getaways to Stradbrooke island or Byron Bay. Four "seppo's" in a classic australian surf vehicle that was as old as we were cruising up the coast hitting every wave we could get without being killed by the locals at Burleigh or the herion addicts in Nimbin.

For six months we ran that car into the ground only needing one repair (a rebuilt starter). Hitting top speeds of 120 kph (that was on a hill) and making the tires squeak every time we went around one of those ingenious Australian roundabouts that substitute for stop signs didn't help the health of the car. The thing was, none of us knew that much about cars, and none of us would have been surprised had The Lancer died at any point and just refused to run. However the lancer never died. It wasn't until the last trip we took that the Lancer met it's end. While trying to make our flight back to the states we drove from Brisbane to Sydney (about 1000k) the lancer was doing great until 60k outside Sydney when suddenly the windshield exploded. The whole windshield suddenly went white and i pulled over and called a tow. As the Lancer was being lifted up onto the RACQ (AAA in Australia) tow truck i sat on the side of the highway and wept wondering if it would ever see the surf again. I left Australia the next day and left the keys and address of the repair shop where the Lancer was with a friend of mine and told him he could have it for the cost of the replaced windshield. I found out later that he had taken the offer and that The Lancer had a stint in Sydney where it took more seppo's to waves that would have gone unreached without it's prescence. I'll never forget the second car i ever owned, the best $200 investment i ever made.