Farewell, Grand old lady
A tribute to the Amby from a generation that laid the epitaph.
Nostalgia: noun (nɒˈstaldʒə) A wistful affection of the past.
If the Maruti Suzuki 800 can be called the people’s car of India, the Ambassador can safely be given the distinction of being the car that brought motoring to the shores of independent India.
With production ceasing in 2014 and Peugeot buying the brand “Ambassador” for a paltry sum of $12 million (£9.6m, if you prefer reading your numerals that way) last week, the last of Indian motoring’s holy trinity (the other two being the Maruti 800 and the Premier Padmini) has been laid to rest.
I come from the ’90s, from a generation of post economic liberalisation in India. A time when the Amby, though still omnipresent, was slowly relegated to the background. We have lived through the sunset of the Amby’s lifetime. There’s very little chance that our families may have owned one in the ’90s, an almost negligible chance of us having driven one, but we’ve most certainly noticed their regal, albeit slightly ungainly presence on the roads, and on many occasions enjoyed the vast expanse the size of Africa of the generous rear seat and had our bottoms cosseted by the duck feather pillow-like plush ride, tuned out of the outside world listening to the soft, kitten-like purring engine while being driven around in one of them.
I’d like to think of the Ambassador as one of Olde Blighty’s parting gifts to India. Think about it, let’s start with the name — Ambassador, try saying that with a British accent and you’d immediately start craving for some Earl Grey brewed by Lord Grey himself. No modern car could ever evoke such feelings. The insides of the car could fit the Buckingham Palace, maybe two if you tried hard enough. Much like most Brits, the Amby had its share of quirks — the foot operated headlamp dipper, the indicator controls mounted on top of the steering hub, the dials that intermittently worked, the handbrake that never worked and the fuel pump that only worked if you placed a wet rag on it. Legend has it that the car was about as reliable as the balmy English weather. And much like the British parliament, every few years you’d have to strip the car down to shreds and re-weld it to bring it back to its supposed glory.
If you’re the amorous kind, there is no better place for hanky-panky than the Amby’s rear. (Ahem. Just to be clear, I haven’t tried anything of this kind just yet, but the overall dimensions do suggest that there is enough and more room for such “experiments”) Try doing that in a modern day car, and you and your partner would certainly be guaranteed a trip to the hospital. On a side note, maybe the Chainsmokers should have used an Ambassador, instead of a Rover. Lot more space in the backseat of this one. Get it? No? Then go listen to this.
The Ambassador, fondly called Amby or Raaja Gaari (the king of the roads) was modelled on the Morris Oxford. Little has changed since 1957, when the car first rolled out of the plant in Uttarpara, West Bengal. In that sense, the Amby held itself in a time warp. While most production cars have a lifecycle of around seven years, the Amby was in production for nearly seven decades with minimal mechanical and cosmetic upgrades and that is an astonishing feat. And for five out of those seven decades, the Amby remained ubiquitous in the Indian landscape. Generations grew up with this car. It played multifaceted roles through its lifetime — taxis which once ruled the roads with stories aplenty of genial Sikh drivers, a family car for the rich and the preferred stately carriage for the bureaucrats. The Amby may have been the only car that was used by both the commoner and the VIPs alike.
The last two decades of the Amby’s lifetime were not as rosy. Post economic liberalisation, the grand old lady couldn’t keep up with her sleeker, faster global rivals. It was Vajpayee who ditched the Ambassador in favour of a BMW, and that was when the ubiquitous White Ambassador with the dreaded red beacon, sun shades, the three-blade mini fan and lacy curtains that could put Victoria’s Secret to shame, was slowly forgotten by the Indian bureaucracy. The Ubers and Olas of this world have been the final nail in the coffin for this old lady in the taxi circuit.
My childhood was filled with stories of the Ambassador. My mum would tell me stories of how roadtrips meant packing 15 people, plus pressure cookers and other assorted picnic paraphernalia into the Ambassador. The Ambassador apparently would swallow it all with ease, but throw tantrums along the road. The tantrums were apparently enjoyable, they gave more time for family bonding. Fixing the tantrums was easy too, pop-open the hood, let the car cool down and you’re good-to-go. And if that didn’t do the trick, there was always a Jugaad (loosely translates to a hack) fix. My dad would tell me of a time when you couldn’t walk into a showroom and walk out with a car. Buying an Ambassador meant you that you had to have your name put on an excruciating, eight year-long waitlist. Worse still, you couldn’t choose the colour. Back when Bangalore’s roads were a safer place, daredevil dad in his teens, apparently took his dad’s Amby out for a spin and drove an entire circuit in reverse gear.
Legend also has it that driving an Ambassador gave you skills like no other. The steering needed the arms of a wrestler, the controls and gears needed the deftness of a surgeon and the brakes needed you to have the legs of a footballer. The Amby needed two runway lengths to go from nought to 60 and another runway length to come to a halt.
My only memories of the Ambassador are from print ads in newspapers and magazines and the one-odd taxi ride to the Delhi airport. My most vivid memory of the Ambassador was from the music video of Bhangra Knights that used to air on Channel [V] in the late ’90s. A black Ambassador complete with flaming graphics on the side.
Yet another slightly blurry memory I have of the Ambassador was from Satyajit Ray’s Feluda (a Bengali private investigator who also goes by the anglicised name — Pradosh C. Mitter) series of books. Feluda’s accomplice, a popular crime fiction writer, Lalmohan Ganguly a.k.a Jatayu, drove a ‘Madrasi Green’ Ambassador. The car was key to the plot of many of the Feluda series of books and also was immortalised by Ray in the movies Sonar Kella (1974) and Joi Baba Felunath (1978).
My last ride in an Ambassador was in the year 2012, a distance of 17 kilometers, from the Thanjavur Railway Station to my university campus. I must admit though, it just didn’t feel very special. Nostalgia aside, modern creature comforts seem to have usurped any other feelings for the Ambassador.
Kolkata now remains the last bastion. A city that is still in love with the bulbous, curvaceous old lady as much as they love the Hilsa (also known as Illish Maach, A river fish that is an integral part of Bengali culture and gastronomy). And the Amby is still a perfect fit with the city’s colonial architecture. The car too is an embodiment of the Bengali Bhadralok’s (gentlefolk — a class that arose during the colonial era in Bengal) genteel, yet sometimes moody personality. In fact, they love the Amby so much, that they went the lengths to create an elaborate Amby-themed Durga Pujo pandal last year in Kolkata.
We as a generation have been given the task of laying the Amby’s epitaph and writing the obituary. While I’m not saddened by this, deep down, I hope the boffins at Peugeot make a cult brand out of the Ambassador. Something retro-cool, like the Mini once it was acquired by BMW. Am I dreaming? Only time will tell.
PS: Monsieur Giovanni Porro must have been a soothsayer. Here’s a Peugeot 206 commercial that aired in the UK in the early 2000s. I wonder if this was what the Birlas were watching, when they signed on the dotted line.
PPS: If you have any Ambassador stories, I’m sure you will, please please please share them.
PPPS: Promise, last one. Re-read this post with a fake Calcutta-British accent. It helps, trust me.
