GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN WORDS by SIRISH CHANDRAN
Premier Padmini
If you wanted space you bought an Amby. If you wanted something sporty you bought
a Padmini. Those were the days...*This is not a page for vintage cars. We will drive modern classics, made in India, and we’re going to apply the only sensible filter we can think of — to drive cars that came with seat belts.
I CAN NO LONGER FIT IN A PADMINI!
It’s so tiny! Squeezing in is an ordeal. The
steering wheel is right at my chest. The
windscreen is almost at my nose. The roof
is resting on my head. An Alto is more
spacious! And to think that back in the day
we used to travel all over the country, five,
even six, piled in, and never complained.
Either this is a sign for me to cut back on
the carbs or modern cars have spoilt us
thoroughly.
Now my family never had a Padmini
but where I grew up all of our neighbours,
every one of them Parsi gentlemen, had the
so-called Fiats — all maintained like they
were part of the Cartier Concours. One even
had a hunting light (no kidding) and there
still is a rare President, parked in the same
spot, now looked after by the grandson
who collects old Fiats like I do watches —
all the colours, all the door openings, all
too bizarre for words. But thanks to the
swelling numbers at Fiat Classic Car Clubs,
our investments seem to have the same
appreciation trajectory. Anyway, sticking
to the only filter we have for this page,
we had to find a car with factory-fitted
seatbelts, and so we stumbled on Russell
Rodrigues’ 1991 Padmini, a car that has
been in his family since it rolled out of thefactory. He arrived armed with a toolbox to
help mend a Contessa we were shooting for
this page, highlighting why the Padmini
was so popular — ‘sasta aur tikau’ (c heap
and long-lasting), as the yellow-and-black
cabbies that not so long ago clogged up
Bombay’s roads, described it.
Russell’s car is a more modern iteration
and, unlike the Bombay ‘kaali-peelis’, has a
moulded steering wheel, a quartz clock in
the clocks and... that’s about it. Everything
else continued unchanged from the
original 1100D of 1974, including the 45-
odd bhp 1.1-litre engine and the four-speed
column shifter. Post this, in the dying days,
came the S1 with bucket seats, the floor-
shifter for the Nissan gearbox from the 118NE, and later on a 1.4 diesel but all of that
was too little too late.
So what’s a Padmini like to drive
today? Compared to the cumbersome old
Ambassador, the Padmini is sprightly, feels
lighter, brakes better, shifts smoother and
turns tighter. The steering is much lighter
and I can see why many sacrificed the
space of an Amby for the driving pleasure
of the Padmini. Of course it is not sporty,
not by a long shot, but it is nicer to drive,
and has a sweet-sounding exhaust note. A
leaky silencer on a Padmini sounds even
better!
I must admit that over the half hour
I thoroughly enjoyed myself. There is a
charm to these old-yet-not-yet-vintage cars
that is so endearing. It’s not priceless like
proper vintage cars so you can understeer
without fear of being a slave to the owner
for the rest of your life. And it takes you
back to a simpler time when you had to
stop twice on your way up the hills to
let the engine cool down, and far from
complaining enjoyed the opportunity to
have another picnic under a banyan tree.
It puts a big smile on your face. And then
you grimace as you try to extricate yourself
from the Padmini and crash back down to
r e a l it y. LCar courtesy:Russell Rodrigues