Red. Two Doors. JDM.

In my family, you drove a Holden or a Ford. That was the rule. Unspoken but understood, the way most family rules are. Nobody sat you down and explained it. You just knew.

I didn't get the memo.

Something about Japanese cars had always pulled at me — the body lines, the styling, the way the interiors felt considered rather than assembled. Honda. Nissan. Mitsubishi. Toyota. There was character in those cars, intention in every curve. I'd pick up copies of Hot Fours, Fast Fours and Rotaries from the newsagent and spend hours in them. Civics, Integras, Preludes, RX-7s, Lancers, Pulsar SSS, Celicas, 300ZXs. These weren't commuter appliances. They were a statement. A style of choice.

I didn't want a taxi car. I wanted JDM.

Seventeen years old. Three months from turning eighteen and getting my licence. The plan was already in place — have a car waiting the day that licence landed in my hand. All I needed was the money and the right car.

The money part was on me.

Three years of flipping burgers at my local fast food chain. Weekday shifts, weekend shifts, double shifts, every public holiday I could get my hands on. Coming home smelling like a fryer, counting hours, stacking dollars. The real life teenager grind, unglamorous and slow and completely necessary. By October 1999 I had eight thousand dollars. Every cent earned the hard way.

This was not the era of CarSales or Facebook Marketplace. The internet was for LimeWire, ICQ and MSN Messenger — nobody was listing cars there. Finding a car meant newspapers and car sales magazines, and a telephone. Not a mobile. An actual telephone, tethered to a wall.

Every Thursday and Friday night I had a routine. New magazine, new newspaper, scan every listing, circle anything that caught my eye, pick up the phone. Saturday was inspection day — dependent on family for lifts, which meant one window per week, and if a car sold before Saturday it was gone. More than once I turned up to find out it had gone that morning. The search stretched on for weeks. Different cars, same result.

Then one Friday night, there it was. A picture in a car sales magazine. A red 1994 Mitsubishi Lancer CC coupe. 1.8 litre, fuel injected, single owner, low kilometres. Two doors — like a proper sports car. A little spoiler on the back. I knew the Lancer name from the rally days and my eyes lit up. It was Friday night. I rang the owner immediately. Eight AM Saturday, first through the door. It was booked.

I didn't sleep much that night.

What if it was already sold? What if there was something mechanically wrong? What if this was another dead end? The anticipation kept me up for most of the night and when Saturday finally arrived I was already dressed before anyone else in the house had stirred.

I hounded my father to hurry up.

Learner's plates on the car, I drove us to the address. We knocked on the door. The owner said it was in the garage and asked us to wait. The roller door opened slowly.

There it was. Red. Two doors. Spoiler. JDM.

Dad and I got in and he drove a few blocks before pulling over and looking across at me. Do you want to drive? We swapped seats and I took the wheel for a few corners. That was it. That was the moment. There was no other decision to make. I had no other choices but this car.

We swapped back and Dad drove us to the owner's house. On the way he asked if I liked it. He already knew — my smile was as wide as the windscreen. He told me to wait by the car while he went to speak to the owner.

I didn't know negotiating was a thing. I was ready to hand over the full eight thousand dollars without a second thought. Instead I sat in the family car listening to muffled conversation through the window, understanding nothing, waiting for everything.

Dad signalled me over. He held out two hundred and fifty dollars. Deposit, he said. We'll have our mechanic check it Monday. If it's clean, seven thousand dollars is yours.

They shook hands.

Did I just buy a car?

On the way home Dad asked if I was okay. I told him I was just quiet from excitement. Then I asked why I was paying seven thousand and not eight. He said something I've never forgotten — never pay the advertising price of a car. I nodded and said nothing else the whole way home. I was already thinking about Monday.

Monday felt like a week. Each class dragged longer than the last, sitting there itching with anticipation when all I wanted was to be home. I got through the day, got home, and went straight to the PlayStation — Final Fantasy VII, trying to make the hours move faster. At six PM I heard Dad come through the front door. I was out of my room before he'd finished saying hello to Mum.

Did the mechanic ring?

He looked at me and said four words.

You just bought a car.

You know that feeling when something big happens and the world goes briefly silent, then a high ringing fills your ears? That's what happened. Pure, overwhelming, silent joy.

We picked the car up that Saturday. The whole family came. Cash handed over, transfer papers signed, and Dad told me to drive it home. On the way he pointed out the fuel gauge. You'll need to fill up. Did you bring money? It's your responsibility now. In my wallet, next to my learner's licence, I had thirty dollars. First time filling up my own car. Such a small thing. It felt enormous.

I parked it under the carport and that's where it sat for a week — mine, waiting, real.

I came home from an early morning shift the following Saturday to find a gift on my bed. From Mum and Dad. A car cleaning kit — bucket, sponge, washing solution, the works. Dad moved the car out and told me to give it a wash.

Two hours. Every panel, every corner, the interior vacuumed, windows wiped, dash and door trims cleaned carefully. A black air freshener tree hung from the rear vision mirror. When it was done it shone like it had never shone before.

Some weeks later, licence in hand — forty five minutes of driving, parking and following the tester's instructions, a pass stamp on a piece of paper and a photo taken — I was officially, legally, completely free.

The car. The licence. The open road.

There is no better feeling at eighteen.

It started with wheels. Sixteen inch chrome rims — very much a trend of the era — wrapped in 205/55 Pirelli semi-low profiles. A serious step up from the stock fourteen inch 185/60s. The wider rubber held that front wheel drive car in a way I hadn't expected. The grip was transformative.

That's how it begins. One mod leads to the next and suddenly you're operating on a permanent cycle of work, save, fit, repeat.

Next came a custom exhaust from a well-known local shop — a two and a half inch system, smaller cat, hotdog resonator, chrome twin muffler tips. The step up from the standard one and a quarter inch peashooter was night and day. You could hear each cylinder firing. It gave the car a proper voice.

Then the stereo. This one had been planned from the start but saved for last because it was the most expensive. A Sony CDX-M610 — ahead of its time, a single din unit that folded out into a double din display. Paired with a Sony Xplode amplifier, Xplode door speakers and a twelve inch Xplode sub. Done at a car audio shop that's still trading today. It was loud. It had bass. It would set off neighbouring car alarms in car parks. Business, not pleasure.

Then someone reversed into my front bumper in a car park and destroyed it. I went to a mate's panel shop and he had an idea — why not fit an Evo 4 style front bumper? Ordered, painted, fitted in six weeks. Matching side skirts followed. The car looked like something out of a magazine. But the stock rear bumper made it look front heavy, so that came next — a rear bumper from a Droid style kit, ordered, painted, fitted. The exhaust now sat wrong with the new rear end, so back to the shop — new hangers welded, system repositioned. Every mod created the next problem and every problem created the next mod.

Finally, front and rear strut braces. Same process — work, save, grind until affordable. When my mechanic called me at work after the next service he asked what I'd done to the car. He said it drove like a go-kart. I told him about the braces. He couldn't believe a bolt-on brace had made that much difference.

The build was complete. Red. Chrome. Bodykitted. Loud. Planted.

For a few years it was everything. Car cruises around town, every hot spot the Melbourne scene had to offer between 2000 and 2005. Car shows, late nights, the community that forms around shared obsession. This was the era and I was in it, living it, enjoying every kilometre.

A respray was starting to form in my mind. Maybe some custom airbrushing. The next chapter was writing itself.

Then it was gone.

I came out of the shops, keys in hand, walking toward where I'd parked.

It wasn't there.

I second-guessed myself. Checked another section of the car park. Walked back. Looked around again. My heart started racing. My legs went weak. My brain was processing something it didn't want to accept.

Nearly five years. Every shift at the burger place. Every sacrificed weekend. Every month saved to fund every mod. The wheels. The exhaust. The stereo. The body kit. The strut braces. Every single piece of that car chosen deliberately, earned slowly, fitted proudly.

Gone.

I called home and told my parents. They came and picked me up. We reported it to the police.

Two weeks later the car was recovered.

It had been stripped bare. Seats gone. Door panels gone. The stereo — every speaker, the amp, the sub, the head unit — gone. The exhaust. The strut braces. Everything that had a value and could be removed had been taken. What was returned to me was a shell. A red shell wearing my body kit and sitting on my chrome wheels, hollow inside.

I was devastated in a way that's hard to explain to someone who hasn't poured themselves into something like that. It wasn't just a car. It was four and a half years of myself.