Travel through time, on a vintage journey

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James Cameron’s Titanic was memorable for many reasons. But for lovers of vintage cars, the film also afforded an opportunity to take a look at long forgotten beauties like the Renault Touring Car and an elegant Daimler-Benz. Bollywood too has celebrated vintage cars like the Austin A-40 Somerset and the 1920s

Ford Model A (Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi) and a Studebaker Champion convertible (in Kashmir Ki Kali). But even beyond the movies, our ideas of vintage cars have been formed by looking at sepia-tinted pictures — perhaps of a beauty owned by a grandparent, or while reading about the exploits of the royal families of India.
“Just as they had competed over who had the most elephants and wives, the Maharajas also vied with each other over who had the fastest or most fashionable car,” says Adil Jal Darukhanawala, the author of Classics and Thoroughbreds (a comprehensive work on vintage cars) and editor of Zigwheels. “Now neither the Maharajas as a race nor the vintage cars exist. Together they made a heady combination.”
While most people consider the automobiles built between 1919 and 1930 as “vintage”, Adil places a different time frame: “I’d say we can extend the period from 1894 to 1939 — but that’s nitpicking.” What there is more agreement on is that there were some iconic designs indeed that emerged during this period. With Europe and America being the hubs of auto manufacturing, Adil says each managed to bring in their own aesthetic. He terms it “emotive design”: “If I had to offer an analogy about how people look at vintage cars, I’d say it’s the same way that we look at good horses, thoroughbreds,” says Adil. “A vintage car doesn’t just have the ability to move — it has the ability to move people.”
For everyone, there is one vintage car that is the ultimate symbol — of their idea of perfection, of what they can never have, of things that are long gone as is the lifestyle that went with them. Just such a symbol would be the Maharaja of Holkar’s short chassis Duesenberg, says Adil, adding, “At one time, Duesenbergs were more prized than Rolls Royces. But the firm was crippled in the financial crisis during the 1930s.”
They may not be manufactured any more, but the space that vintage cars occupy in popular consciousness is one no modern sedan — luxury or otherwise — can fill.