Can Julian Wilson, Mick Fanning, Taj Burrow and Josh Kerr really be wrong?
In the good old days, there were no Audis. Surfers drove ugly long-snouted station wagons and those fat maggots called Kombis. Every surf trip was a pain-in-the-ass that kinked the spine and drained the wallet in gas money.
That was back when the surfer was damned, persecuted, ostracised; when he was wild and deadly. When we were radicals and self-proclaimed wave-dancing outlaws, however fatuous.
Our fascination with being hard-core changed sometime in the nineties when the money spigot got turned on. Pro surfers became millionaires. Whomever happened to fall into the surf clothes game early drowned in his dividends.
The rest of us on the periphery soaked a little in it, too. Shapers made some cash if they were smart enough to market ’emselves. Even the toy-collecting graphic designers who enslaved ’emselves to brands were scooping up six-figures.
And so, naturally, our car of choice changed.
Who wants to be broken down on the side of the road or driving a car that sounds like it has asthma or swallowed by a cabin of grey plastics and cheap digital clocks pressed into the dash when we could be embraced by the finest in German engineering?
No, it ain’t Mercedes (median age of owners, 55) or BMWs, (a garish kind of teutonic Subaru).
Audi. Don’t the name just ring? Cars so graceful and beautiful they make our dreary lives seem richer. Luxury in simplicity.
Ask Julian Wilson, whom I see patrolling the streets of Bondi in a black A1 (with co-pilot Jimmy Lees) or Josh Kerr, rolling through Baja in a Q5, or even Mick Fanning, in his nut-brown A4.
Luke Stedman had a S-series wagon; Andy Irons drove a Q7, Bruce drives an A4. Taj Burrow’s three-litre A6 became legend among his pals as it was handed from one to another, a lifeboat to his carless friends.
When Matt Biolos goes surfing at Lowers he doesn’t sling his Couch Potatoes and Rockets in a Dodge; he chooses a sleek black Audi A3 Sportback.
The Audi is an angel that stands in quiet piety among a crowd of grotesque bland.
Good timing. Audi just put out a video starring Mick Fanning. It’s called Audi Lifestyle Experience: Surfing with Mick Fanning https://vimeo.com/127893517
I’ve got one and it’s shit.
cool ad.
poseur core.
Audi is so 2014
No no no. You buy a new car, take it to the beach once, become unhinged at the intrusion of sand and wax, then immediately buy a second, beater car to take surfing.
YOU DO NOT PUT SAND IN THE AUDI.
…that ain’t true! They respond well to little dunes on the seats, on the floor, in the door sills. And I’m not one for throwing towels under my ass and so I sit, wet, on my cloth seats. Six years I’ve been doing it and the foam hasn’t collapsed and the colour is roughly the same as it was when I scooped it up…
haha, you have cloth seats.
How could I ever sit on the stretched and dyed hide of a slaughtered cow? The Bitchy Crab is vegetarian above all.
Oh but it is true. If you can afford an Audi, then you’ve got 2 or 3k lying around (at least you should, else that Audi was a bad financial call) for the purchase of a rusted but reliable Toyota/Volvo/Subaru which will absorb sand and seawater with a laugh, while the new Audi remains pristine as f*ck.
Don’t be fooled – the pros driving Audis are as rebellious as ever, but their rebellion is turned inward now. They know that 90% of surfers can’t afford an audi and they’re just throwing it in your faces.
…a common complaint. But, wait! The canny shopper can find a three-year-old A3 Sportback, minimal ks, at the same price as a new Toyota compact or Hyundai. Why wouldn’t you?