So what is this thread all about? As we all know, it was the late 90's when a lot of international automobile manufacturers started setting up shop in India. Until then, the only cars we could read about were the Maruti's, Fiat's and the Ambassadors. The cheapest car in those days was the Maruti 800 and the most expensive car was the Mercedes E Class. There was nothing available for anyone having a budget between 5 lakhs to 25 lakhs. Often people resorted to importing cars or purchasing 2nd hand imported cars. The late 90's / early 2000's saw the arrival and the rise of the luxury car market - the Honda City, Mitsubishi Lancer, Opel Astra, Maruti Suzuki Baleno, Skoda Octavia. Budget cars like the Daewoo Cielo, Ford Ikon, Opel Corsa were also introduced in the lower price range. Although the luury cars were expensive in those days - some of the cars were an instant hit (City, Astra, Lancer) while some of them were outright flops (Baleno, Corsa). Looking at the market response and the need for more powerful cars, few companies were brave enough to lauch performance versions / limited editions of their existing models.
Honda City 1.3/1.5 - Honda City 1.5 V-tec
Mitsubishi Lancer 1.5 - Mitsubishi Lancer 1.8 INVECS
Ford Escort 1.3 - Ford Ikon 1.6 Zetec
Skoda Octavia - Skoda Octavia RS
Opel Astra - Opel Astra Club
I am sure many of us who started reading auto magazines in the 90's would have thoroughly gone through the test drives / shootouts of these cars in Auto India, Autocar India or Overdrive. Some of us would have even dreamt of owning one of these cars - while some would have even fulfilled their dreams then (or maybe now). Just like any other product, cars too have a product life cycle - the old model needs to be discontinued to make way for the new models. In the last 10 years, most of the models discussed above have almost disappeared from the roads (expecially the Cielo's, Astra's and Escorts) - the others still remain in limited numbers.
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But you still see a couple of well maintained cars on our forum. Between Desmocedeci and myself, we own 3 such cars - City V-Tec and 2 Baleno's (I wish we had retained the Qualis). We met today morning to discuss about cars and have a mini photoshoot of our cars. The discussion spanned through various topics - Indian cars, bikes, supercars etc - but nothing more interesting than our cars. Come on, these were the cars we started reading about first when auto magazines like Autocar, Overdrive, Business Standard Motoring started their subscriptions. These are the cars that started the "luxury" segment in India. These are the cars that bought about the change in the Indian car industry. These are the cars that moved people away from imported cars. These are the cars which put India on the automotive world map.
Today these cars are old and you would hardly see them on our roads. They would have either been scrapped or sold for a very competitive price in smaller towns. However, a few of us still own these cars (either from new or brought 2nd hand). The objective of this thread is to bring together owners of all discontinued Indian cars to participate in a regular meet and discuss our cars. Once we have enough participation, we can have a meet / drive, what you say guys?
The Blast from the Past drive can aim to include the following cars (and of course, everyone is welcome to join along in any car) :
Maruti Suzuki
Esteem
Zen
Baleno
Honda
City Type 1
City Type 2
Mitsubishi
Lancer (SLX, SFX)
Opel
Astra
Corsa
Daewoo
Cielo (Nexia)
Matiz
Ford
Escort
Ikon
Fiat
Palio
Siena / Petra / Weekend
Update this thread with details of your car and once we have a sizeable number - lets arrange a meet.
P.S. Please feel free to add any models that I may have accidently missed out.