Despite the four-wheel drive, one tourist got his Nissan Patrol hire car stuck on an Australian beach

Published on Jun 06, 2025 at 3:14 PM (UTC+4)
by Jason Fan

Last updated on Jun 06, 2025 at 9:25 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by Jason Fan

Getting a Nissan Patrol hire car stuck on the beach is not most people’s idea of an ideal vacation.

But for a man from Sydney, this was his reality, after he decided to drive on Melbourne’s Elwood Beach.

The white Nissan Patrol quickly became a white elephant as the tide threatened to turn a road trip into a shipwreck.

Somehow, the man himself, a tourist called Mohammad, doesn’t seem fazed at all.

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This strange incident happened during January this year in Australia.

Australians do seem to like driving on beaches, given how a mystery car was found on Sydney’s Balmoral beach just months prior.

Explaining his situation to reporters on the scene, Mohammad said that he drove onto the sand, but got caught when the tide came in.

“I thought a bit of sun and hanging out with mates. Have a nice trip. It could have been worse. I could have been in an accident,” he said.

When asked why he was driving on the beach in the first place, he told a reporter that he was saving someone.

However, the individual he mentioned was nowhere to be found.

Witnesses also claimed they saw a 4WD doing donuts on the sand in the early hours of the morning.

A day later, he came clean on a television talk show, revealing that he was not actually saving anyone.

He was simply in Melbourne for a holiday, and wanted to have a good time.

When asked for the real reason why he drove the car into the sand, he claimed he wanted to do a bit of ‘sand drive training’, since he wanted to get into off-roading.

Despite the predicament he found himself in, the man didn’t seem worried at all.

The man went for a swim, bought himself a coffee, and was listening to music.

All of this was happening as members of the public and the police watched on.

Eventually, a patrol vehicle came by to pull the car out of the sand.

After three hours, the car was finally free.

With the Nissan Patrol sustaining some water damage, Mohammad is probably going to have a hard time explaining this to the hire-car company.

He was also fined by the local authorities for getting his rental stuck on the beach.

The lesson here is, if you want to drive on sand and not get your hire car stuck, make sure you’ve the right vehicle.

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Jason Fan is an experienced content creator who graduated from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore with a degree in communications. He then relocated to Australia during a millennial mid-life crisis. A fan of luxury travel and high-performance machines, he politely thanks chatbots just in case the AI apocalypse ever arrives. Jason covers a wide variety of topics, with a special focus on technology, planes and luxury.