Vehicles

V-35 Courier

The Lars family's landspeeder was a typical family vehicle: it provided simple, practical transportation. Unlike Luke's once-sporty X-34, the V-35 Courier was built to be inexpensive, reliable, and thoroughly unremarkable. Although it was an older model, Owen and Luke managed to keep the heavily used SoroSuub V-35 Courier in excellent mechanical condition. With a fresh paint job and some interior work, it could have been worth a couple of thousand credits on a used speeder lot in Mos Eisley. Since Owen and Beru Lars used the speeder only about twice a month, it was often stored in the family garage, which doubled as Luke's workshop.

Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru used the vehicle for their regular errand trips to Anchorhead, the small hamlet not far from their farm. While the speeder's top cruising speed was only about one hundred kilometers per hour, that was fast enough for everyone in the family but Luke. In Anchorhead, Owen gathered supplies for the farm (he always needed parts for his moisture vaporators because of Mechanical breakdown or nocturnal thieving by Jawas and other scavengers), and Beru would pick up household items and sell her excess hydroponically grown vegetable for whatever price she could get.

The Lars landspeeder would seat three. The driver sat atop the vehicle, almost directly in front of the repulsor-field generator; a retractable windscreen provided protection from harsh weather. The unit had a simple scanner system for navigation, although Owen and Beru knew the routes around Anchorhead so well that they seldom used it.

The passenger compartment was located just beneath the cowling and was entered through folding access panels. The passenger seats folded down to reveal the large cargo compartment inside the body of the vehicle.

As is typical of many older speeders, the repulsor-field generator dominated the vehicle. The engine's accessible location made maintenance easy. Operation of the repulsor system was simple: the repulsor generated provided lift to keep the vehicle above the ground and also provided power to the turbine thrust system.

The repulsorlift generator for such a craft is open to the air for cooling purposes. While better cooling could be seen as a benefit on most planets, this particular feature is a liability on a desert world such as Tatooine, where loose sand and other particles constantly clog intake vents and ruin ion pistons. Owen Lars solved the problem in genuine moisture farmer fashion: he built homemade filtering screens for the repulsor generator and the air intakes. 

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