Cars: From icons to relics

Imagine we were back in the 1980s and you asked me to offer odds if you bet that the Ambassador would disappear from India’s roads.

“A hundred to one,” I would have said, laughing heartily.

At that time, one couldn’t think of India without the Ambassador, a vehicle that had ruled our roads for half a century. If owning a car itself was a luxury, owning an Ambassador — the vehicle used by ministers and secretaries, commissioners and generals, executives and tycoons — was an unabashed statement of wealth and prestige.

If you were lucky to be born into an Ambassador-owning family, you probably rode the same car to kindergarten, high school and college. Thrift, that majestic Indian virtue, did not reduce with wealth. If anything, the rich had more possessions to practise frugality, using their toothbrush even after its bristles were puffed out like broccoli and employing the same refrigerator for two decades (hopefully changing the food inside more frequently).

The Ambassador, with a sturdy engine sitting in a bulbous body of steel, was built for endurance (if for little else). Repairs were cheaply carried out by hundreds of roadside mechanics using inexpensive — if somewhat dubious — spare parts.

But you would have won the bet. Today the Ambassador is a non-entity. It appears that thrift is out, showmanship is in. And longevity is passé: the rich buy and discard the latest brands with a healthy frequency. The incongruous Ambassador, with its design unchanged for 50 years, has no place here.

Going back to our 1980s scenario, imagine if you went on to predict that, along with the Ambassador, the Bajaj scooter would also vanish. I’d have laughed louder and raised the odds to 1000-to-1 because the idea of the Bajaj disappearing was even more preposterous.

After all, the Ambassador was the transport of the elite, but the Bajaj was the vehicle that shakily transported the huge middle class. It enjoyed a theoretical waiting period of 25 years — you booked one for your future son-in-law when your daughter was in kindergarten.

In a shackled economy, it represented hope for the middle-class family... literally, because it carried the entire family. Father would drive with a child standing between his legs and under his chin. Mother would sit sideways, pressed against the spare tyre at the back, and a second child would squeeze between the parents.

Larger families would remove the extra tyre to make room for an extra child, who would sit behind Mother and grasp her tightly. The whole contraption would miraculously meander through narrow lanes, jump over bumps and weave through traffic.

At one heady point in its history, Bajaj sold 1,00,000 units of its popular Chetak brand every month. Its advertisement was an emotionally charged concoction of patriotism and middle-class mobility. An entire neighbourhood — with children holding Indian flags — congregated around a newly purchased vehicle as the background singer crooned: “Hamara Bajaj”.

Such was its stature that Bajaj’s makers talked about making the scooter a global icon. Instead, in December 2009, they quietly announced they were ceasing production. The news was met with head-shaking, hand-wringing dismay.

“Exit an icon. Salute the scooter,” said The Statesman newspaper. Nostalgic bloggers posted old advertisements online. And the company itself wrapped its announcement in a blanket of sentimentality: “We too feel nostalgic about how dear Bajaj scooters have been to the Indian middle class,” declared Milind Bade, a top Bajaj official.

But the nostalgia is probably not widespread. When I asked Ramesh Manduskar, who zips around on a Kawasaki motorcycle today, if he misses the Bajaj he used to ride as a teenager, he responded with sarcasm: “Of course! I remember starting it every morning: six kicks, no response; then tilt vehicle to an acute angle and deliver six more kicks; finally it would sputter to life. Who wouldn’t miss that daily ritual?”

Similarly there is some sense of loss about the Ambassador but not truckloads of it. Karnail Singh, who operates a modest 20-car taxi service in Delhi, vouches for the Ambassador, enthusiastically explaining how, with just Rs20,000, he can make a used Ambassador — no matter how old — good as new by re-treading the tyres, repairing the body and upholstery and getting the engine re-bored (that thrifty Indian trick of widening worn-out cylinders and fitting new piston rings). But when I asked him how many Ambassadors he has in his current fleet, he sheepishly admits it is only one, that too for old times’ sake: he hardly uses it as a taxi.

“Why?” I ask, intrigued. “You said it’s fantastic.”

“For the taxi operator, yes. But none of my customers wants to ride in it.”

That statement seems to capture India’s sentiment. Indians have replaced the Bajaj and the Ambassador with other vehicles in their garages... and in their hearts. India has moved on.

So going back 30 years, if you had wagered Rs1,000 with me, you’d have Rs10 lakh now (imagining, of course, that I would have paid up).