At a time when the world is moving remorselessly towards an era of electric vehicles (EVs), India’s car lovers had a nostalgic banquet of some of the world’s most magnificent mechanical marvels at New Delhi’s recent ‘Concours d’ Elegance’.
The beautifully restored collection of some 150 vintage cars and motorcycles, including priceless Bentleys, Rolls Royces and Jaguars, made the venue perhaps the most expensive parking lot in the world. But it was not just luxury cars.
One of the real stars was a little 500 cc Fiat Topolino, probably the first car assembled in India in 1949. On the other end of the spectrum was a fully electric MG ZS EV that will soon be the latest EV on Indian roads.
The 20th century meant for mechanical cars and the exhibits not only showed the beauty and elegance of the vehicles but also the evolution of their engineering technologies.
The styling had evolved from early boxy cars, looked a bit like the horse-drawn coaches that had preceded them to symphonies of steel in many flowing shapes.
Like the horse carriages, many of the early cars had solid rubber tyres and the evolution of their suspensions over decades was fascinating to see. The engines had also evolved from big, noisy and slow revving monsters to sleek and smaller power units that were more fuel-efficient and less polluting.
On the display were large numbers of Rolls Royce (RR) because the extravagantly rich community of India’s maharajas had bought so many ‘rollers’ between the wars (1921 and 1939) that they had accounted for about 25 per cent of RR’s global production.
As the maharajas were very fussy and demanding buyers, Rolls-Royce had a special production line for them called the Maharaja specials. Fredrick Henry Royce considered the Ghost to be the best car ever made with an engine that was so silent, which sounded like a sewing machine.
It was a silence that inspired its name as Ghost, Phantom, Wraith, Cloud, Dawn and Shadow over the years. This silence also made it a great car for hunting because it could quietly approach an unsuspecting animal and shoot it down.
The new Rolls-Royce cars were built with a distinctive bonnet, flaring front fenders and a flat vertical radiator that gave it a rather classical Grecian look, a bit like the shape of the Parthenon with vertical fins like classic columns.
This style remains unchanged to this day giving it the longest history of continuous unaltered design. The intertwined letters Rolls-Royce on the hubcaps began in 1905 and in 1911 came the distinctive bonnet mascot of the flying lady that was called the ‘Spirit of Ecstasy’.
As the arms of the silver lady, seemingly draped in delicate fabric, were stretched backwards like the wings of an angel, the mascot had to be turned sideways before the side-hinged bonnet could be opened.
Also on display were a collection of German automaker Volkswagen cars to say nothing of the beauties from Mercedes. There were numerous British cars as well as several classic American cars that had dominated the world for two decades after 1945, until they were swamped by an invasion of Japanese cars.
The MG ZS declares the arrival of Chinese cars and will soon be followed by electric and conventional cars from Great Wall Motors and other Chinese companies. The automotive industry is the world’s largest manufacturing industry, making some 80 million cars a year. The automotive industry has hugely changed human lifestyles and also shaped the evolution of many other technologies in the world.
Murad Ali Baig
Senior automobile analyst