It feels great to be a part of Team-BHP now, though I had been using this forum for quite a long while. As a regular visitor, I used to keep a tab on what's happening in the car-bike scenario and this forum helped me a lot to decide on my new car, which should be coming anytime next week. A big thank you to all for that.
I'll be posting about my car whenever that comes, but before that let me introduce myself. Well, at 49 I am like one of those vintage/classic cars and had been driving on Indian roads for, well, last 22 years. A filmmaker and journalist by profession my driving had been mainly in two cities --Delhi and Kolkata, with occasional highway drives.
I am one of those guys who has witnessed the annals of Indian cars, so I might be of some use as a historian in this forum.
Told you, I am vintage!
Well, I was a car enthusiast from day 1 when I graduated to my first car (a second hand Premier Padmini) in 1990 from a Kinetic Honda scooter. Those were the days when only two cars ruled Indian roads -- the Padmini (commonly called the Fiat) and Ambassador. Yes, the Maruti 800 (oldest version) was there, but people used to look at it with skepticism, wondering how an average Indian would get in and out of the car.
My second car, after say about three years, was a Premier Padmini diesel. Again a second hand car. In a way, I am the first generation Indian who got a taste of diesel passenger cars. The car was messy, and I lived with that mess for about three years. But well, I developed a fancy for diesel from then and now that we have the options, would be shifting to my favorite fuel.
My last two phases of car-owning was kind of standard. 1997 -- I shifted to a second hand Maruti 800 and then to Alto VX (the 1100 cc engine) in 2004 (this was a second hand car too). Lovely cars, these Marutis, and I dont think I need to vouch for them.
Hmm, that's just about all, excepting that I have a passion for cars, can't let others to drive a car in which I have to tavel and in the process have driven almost all regular cars that we get to see on Indian roads.
And well, as a "historian" would like to add that way back in 1992 (or was it 1994?) I was one of the first Indians who test drove the Santro and the Merc E550 at the Auto-Expo in Delhi. Those cars till then were not launched. (I got a miniature model of the Merc for free from them for this achievement. I still preserve that. So sad that they gave only a model and not the car, hehehe)