The Brown Hornet rides again

It's not a bird...
It's not a bee...
It's the...
















No, not that one. The Brown Hornet, for those who came in late, was my first car - if you're not counting the powder blue 1976 Datsun 180B (cream vinyl roof, metal sunshade, street cred of DC Talk) inherited from me Nan, which I ain't. The Hornet wasn't actually a Hornet, since AMC didn't export to 'Straya, or even particularly brown, given it was more a pooey maroon with a nasty beige-tan interior. What it was, was a 1988 R31 Nissan Skyline GX with a three-litre six and a four-speed auto. Ten years ago as of Christmas eve last year, the Brown Hornet left the forecourt of Grafton Mitsubishi (since gone tits-up, through no fault of mine - though they did get royally screwed on the deal) and joined life as the loyal servant of Dr Yobbo. It took about ten or fifteen kays along the back road towards the Lawrence ferry to figure out the reason the odometer only read 110 thousand kays or thereabouts in the 13 years since rolling off Nissan Australia's production line in Clayton - also long since gone tits-akimbo - wasn't solely because the thing had been a sparsely used second car of a Harvey Norman manager's missus, but because the odometer only worked intermittently, i.e. when it could be arsed. As did the fuel gauge.


















Despite that - and the fact Nissan Australia specified the contacts in the high beam headlight switch were factory OEM alfoil, explainifying why the fuckers burned out every twelve months or 10,000 km - the Hornet was the most awesomest weapon in the history of shit. Fucken ay. It was as ugly as a hatful of arseholes, had the aerodynamics of a block of flats (the Japs had clearly looked to Europe for styling inspiration - though sadly had looked no further than 1980s Volvos), had a narrower track than a snowmobile and a softer arse than Brando-as-Dr-Moreau, meaning debilitating roll oversteer in corners was possible (read nigh-unavoidable) even in the low-speed confines of your local Woolies carpark - to say nothing of the time Your Correspondent somehow conspired to spin the bastard out on a mildly moist roundabout near the Caloundra re-entry to the Sunshine Motorway, on my first trip away with Dr Mrs Dr Yobbo. But what it had was that glorious RB30 three-litre six, matched with that creamy four-speed auto - the same setup as borrowed by Holden for the VL Commodore. It devoured distance. And distance was what it was fed, in bulk - Christ knows what the odometer would have read after four or five years had the fucker actually functioned continuously, but it would have been a good fifteen thousand kays a year at least with plenty of trips up and down the Pacific Highway from Sydney home to the North Coast, then moving up to Brisvegas, then plenty of sorties back down to Sin City to go to stuff like Homebake...















and to catch up with mates and sink piss like real men...
















...or at least like men do in that part of Sydney. It served as Hovel shopping trolley in the wilds of Randwick, towed trailers up and down the hills of St Lucia for moving days between iterations of Chateaux Dodgy, racked up untold numbers of sorties down the Goldie to catch up with Moff and his band of no-goods, did sterling service on the great Springbrook camping mission of '03, performed unintentional circlework on the road out to Dumaresq dam out the back of Farmadale - that fucking hideous roll oversteer again - credit to the mighty Dawso, whose 21st it was, for not only enduring the trip into the undergrowth but acting as site foreman in the operation to dig the fucker back out again (well he did turn out to be a geologist I guess.) Dawso had a beige Pintara wagon (the eminently regrettable four-cylinder local variant of the R31 Skyline) which, while even more rat-arsed than the Brown Hornet shared most of its foibles - dodgy fuel gauge, dodgy odometer, dodgy high beam switch, set-square styling - though spent far more of its time sideways in RSL carparks, abandoned quarries, leaving HSC exam venues et al, Dawso being Dawso.





















Brown Hornet on tour: Outside the Clovelly Hotel, Nov 2001


















Somewhere above Montville, April 2002

















Broken near Armidale, May 2002
















Outside Chateau Dodgy Evolution III in St Lucia, Feb 2003
(random fact: Buddha Handy lived in the apartment block over the road)

Anyway, in short, it was a fucking weapon. Noone I've spoken to who's ever owned a 1986-91 Strayan-built R31 skyline has ever had anything other than praise for the things - the marginally better looking '89-on model (they chiseled a bit off the square front section and put GT-R style round stoveburner taillights on it, which looked pretty bogus on something intended as a family taxi) had an electronic overdrive four speed auto, which according to old mate Matt who's had one (in the wanted Kelvinator white) since his folks handballed it to him after high school, wasn't as good as the conventional one on the original (my) model R31. Even so, Matt bought a grey grey import (i.e. it was both metallic grey and Jap-import) R33 GTS to supercede his R31, but ended up selling the ricer and kept the old whiteware-on-wheels until the thing literally could give no more, nearly twenty years after it rolled outta Clayton - and he abused the frack out of the thing away from lights and intersections, he's got the mechanical sympathy of a monster truck driver - when in the last few months he's used his fat accountant salary to get himself a BMW 3-something diesel.

Sadly, like last edition's title (of course there's more to life than beer and sport - there's tits), this one's something of a misnomer. Brushgrove Wreckers claimed the Hornet many a year ago, but his spirit lives on... in a slightly bizarre way.

Phone call this afternoon. Moff, half-cut at the Gold Coast races on a lads' day out. (The bastard.) He's rung to tell me that in the last race of the day, he was struggling to pick a runner FTW (or even FTP - as an aside I'm considering promoting the use of 'FTP' with reference to stuff which is a'ight but not quite For The Win - eg 'Peter Siddle FTP!' or 'Cold day-old BBQ sausages FTP!' ...Actually who the fuck am I kidding, cold day-old sausages FTW this day and every day 'til the end of eternity.) Then he spotted this particular conveyance on the tote:
















No-brainer, really. He put a lazy $10 each way on the nose.
And the Brown Hornet pissed it in.

As we go to press Moff is $170 up for the day, which if hasn't already been drunk, will be shortly, along with the rest of the members of the lads' day posse. Salut boys, that's fine work. And like they, we take this opportunity to raise a glass - or a stubbie of short-dated Grolsch at least - to the memory of the Brown Hornet.

And Moff, you owe me a beer.
Cheap-arse short-dated Grolsch don't count either.

The Doctor is OUT.