(result of long typing yesterday night, copying and pasting now)
Now let me walk you through the plant (as it used to be):
You drove down LBS Marg from Sion station (the old Mumbai Agra Road), took a right turn at Kamani and after some 200 mts you would see a blue gate with PAL written on it. Some 50 mts ahead was the personnel department and security building. The "factory" gate to your left and the "colony" gate to your right. A visitor would go to the security building, peer in through a small glass window (as you would do when buying cinema tickets), mention the department he would want to visit and he would get a yellow gate pass with something scrawled illegibly on it. Enter the factory gate and you had a straight road leading to the main building. You would immediately see the "sales building" and brand new RFD cars (ready for delivery) with all bonnets open with the dealer's name written on the inside of the bonnet in white chalk. The most prominent were BCMA (Bombay Cycle and Motor Agency) and PNM (Premnath Motors Delhi). You would see contract drivers milling around, trying to put jacks and wheel spanners in each car before driving them out of the gate. I still remember the crisp clear exhaust note of the brand new engines (today's cars are all antiseptic in comparison). Crossover to your right and walk around a 100 metres and you come to the WHRC (Walchand Hirachand Research Centre) and the service station. Walk a little ahead and you would enter transmission assembly and the machine shop. A little to the right was the main assembly line wioth the body and paint shops a little further leftwards. Further backwards was the "main building". This had the accounts and service departments on the ground floor, the senior executive offices (including that of the chairman) on the first floor and I don't know what on the second floor. Go ahead and you would hit the forge shop (yes, they made forgings in-house), the small press shop (with only one huge "Becker and Van Hullen" press for company) and the "balancing plant" as the engine assembly department was known for some odd reason. Next to the balancing plant was "ramp no 2" or the rectification department. Believe you me, every single car's doors were made to close here by hammering only God knows wherever with plastic hammers. Most of the doors would not close at the point of roll-down. A small test track with 2 "superelevations" completed the picture. The Central Railway yard line was just beyond the periphery. Production used to be 60 cars per day.
The models (I am listing all of them) - Incidentally the car was known inside the plant as "PP Car". Nobody ever said Premier Padmini, it was always PPCar:
Premier Padmini Standard
Premier Padmini Economy
Premier Padmini Economy Taxi (10 leaf rear springs and metallic speedometer gear)
Premier Padmini Deluxe BE (BE means bench seat)
Premier Padmini Deluxe (it is not "Deluxe BU" but "Deluxe" only which please note - BU means bucket seats - and corresponding floor shift gears
Premier Padmini Deluxe BE AC
Premier Padmini Deluxe AC
PDA (Premier Drive Away Chassis - the station wagon type body was built outside and the car used to be called "Premier Safari".
Premier Padmini S1 BE (column shift)
Premier Padmini S1 (floor shift)
Premier Padmini S1 BE AC
Premier Padmini S1 AC
Premier Padmini 137D (with the 1366 cc FNM derived diesel engine - origins in the VW Golf)
Whew ! See how many models we had ???????? For originality freaks like Karlosdeville and President, I can give you trim levels for all models which you can use for restoration purpose.
Best regards,
Behram Dhabhar |