[Ram]

Originally Posted by Centro-P

Its big, its spacious, is pretty comfortable, and all the fat aunites and uncles can easily fit in there whereas they would have a hard time going into an Indica. It also has enough dicky space(everybody knows how much stuff we Indians carry ) and its usually dirt cheap to maintain. And do taxi drivers really care if its a 50 year old model?

Just remembered an experience on on the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, Kolkata in the summer of 2001. I was following a brand new Ambassador taxi in my white Esteem. We were heading towards Salt-Lake.

The Ambassador was rolling and rocking undamped like a lumbering hippopotamus. I braked to increase my distance. Eventually the taxi-driver couldn't hold a straight line anymore. He ran over and crushed a dog and sped off.

I remember wondering back then, how a creation with such shameful road dynamics could be bought and sold as brand new!
My friend commented that all Ambassadors were like that, shoddily constructed by a manufacturer, notoriously indifferent to the driver's hardship. At one time, HM would deliver the car without a speedometer, because speedometers were, would you believe it, out of stock?

HM continues to sell acres of these white cars to an equally callous state purchase junta.

As a car-buyer, the opinion started to form that even a Mitsubishi Lancer manufactured by Hindustan Motors would be of suspect quality.

But you're right the rear seat does envelop you like a living room sofa.

And the trunk does look like it was made to accomodate holdalls. Does anyone know/remember what a holdall is? Those leather-belted, stitched canvas bedrolls, we used to carry on long-distance rail journeys in the days when the railways had a 1st, 2nd and 3rd class.

Ram