Noble and vintage

What is it about vintage cars that makes them so appealing? The slow golden days when there was happiness and contentment around? RANJIT LAL pulls the wraps off them.

FOR most of the year they lie in hibernation, under tarpaulins in dark musty sheds, or custom-built garages. Then one fine day, the wraps are pulled off and the dressing up begins. Paint and lacquer, spit and polish is applied with dedication and fervour; engines and gearboxes are stripped, oiled and serviced and a frantic search begins for disintegrated or dropped-off parts. Then at last, the starting handle is cranked. Like bad tempered bears, the cars sputter and shudder and snarl to life and trundle out into the sun, ready to face another parade where they will be the cynosure of all eyes.

What is it about vintage cars that make them so appealing? That they are more beautiful and glorious than anything currently on the roads? That their polished stainless steel engineering can make your mouth go dry and heart beat faster, even if you know nothing about engines? That they remind you of the slow golden days when there seemed to be so much contentment and happiness around, and time for everyone and everything? That they make you smile with their hoarse "phrooo-phrooo" hooters and quaint upright carriage? Probably it is a bit of all these, and today, one thing is clear: they are becoming more popular year by year and now, apart from the big metros, even the smaller towns in India are enthusiastically hosting annual vintage and classic car rallies.

The automobile first came to India in 1902, and by 1928 there were roughly 1,00,000 cars bucketing down the dusty rutted tracks of the country. The rich and elite - and of course, the country's kaleidoscopic collection of maharajas - favoured the noble marques: Rolls-Royce, Mercedes-Benz, Hispano Suiza, Cadillac, Jaguar and the like. The maharajas of course, customised their cars outrageously: the Nizam of Hyderabad installed a throne in his Silver Ghost, the Maharaja of Alwar threw a temper tantrum and converted six of his Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts into garbage trucks, and another maharaja - probably conscience stricken by the extravagance - had a thatched roof put on his Rolls.

The cars that became popular in the 1920s and 1930s were large sturdy open seven seaters - tough Buicks and Fords and Studebakers from America for example, which could remain in one piece on our horrific roads. Later, in the 1930s and 1940s, four- door sedans were preferred - nervous cranky Morrises, Austins, Citroens, Rovers and Fords, which nevertheless held their own in the heat and dust, and completed many an epic journey to the hinterland.

For competitive purposes, these cars have now been classified according to the era in which they were made: "Edwardians" between 1905 and 1917; "Vintage" between 1918 and 1929; "Post- vintage" between 1930 and 1939. And of course, I guess, a "Classic" would be any car dating to even the 1970s that sends your pulse racing and compels you to hurry over and stroke its graceful lines and gawp at its magnificent engine.

Not too many of the wonderful old cars remain in the country; one estimate suggests that there are perhaps only 5,000 of them left. Many were taken out of India before the "national treasure" law shut the garage door on this practice. Of the cars that remain, around 150 are high-value cars. Today, there is such a great demand for vintage cars in India (not always for altruistic reasons) that prices are well above those prevailing abroad for similar machinery.

Owning and maintaining vintage cars in India has always been a challenging and expensive pursuit. Spare parts usually have to be imported or ingeniously fashioned in-house, and restoration to original specifications is always a painstaking, maddeningly slow, research-intensive process. As a result, many an old clunker has been left to rust in peace in an old derelict shed, with peepuls growing through the floorboards, in small upcountry towns. Lucky ones may be spotted by vintage car buffs and rescued. Today, the owners of the more flamboyant makes - Rolls- Royce, Alfa Romeo, Mercedes-Benz, Bentley, Jaguar, Cadillac and the like, are usually rich industrialists or the wealthy elite. Some collect these cars as a hobby and take care that they are indeed authentically restored and get the best possible treatment; others, alas, are less bothered, they tart up their cars horribly and show them off as status symbols. But there were also those who regularly used their giant classics (usually of the 1940s and 1950s) till recently. For instance, till the petrol crisis of the mid-1970s, you could still see battleship-sized Cadillacs, Chryslers and Austin Princesses burbling along the roads of Mumbai, immaculately kept by their fastidious Parsi owners. Happily, there are also those modest middle-class families that have been nursing beloved old heirloom Austins and Morrises and Fords, with tender loving care and trundle them out proudly for the annual rallies. Often amateurishly hand-painted and locally restored, these knock-kneed clunkers may not win trophies, but they do win hearts. And that, I guess is what vintage and classic cars are all about.

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