5 cars that bring me joy
I love cars but I love driving them even more. Over the last couple of decades, I have seen cars in every corner of the world, and have driven them, also around every corner of the world.
Getting behind the wheel of any car is special and over the years there have been lots of cars that have brought a lot of joy to my heart and plastered my face with a smile. Whether it was being the first to take the Nano to Khardungla or spending the day lapping an iconic race-track in Germany in an Audi R8, both were special drives in cars that were special.
And there have been so many that I could fill up the length of the article with just those – crossing Morocco in a Range Rover, driving across Armenia in a Lada Niva, doing the first every lap of the Golden Quadrilateral and then setting a national record in a Skoda Laura. And to start of with, driving the length of the country non-stop in a Maruti 800, all are special.
However I will pick out five of the more recent drives in cars that are even more special because of the journey we have completed together. But, a couple of drives and cars miss out because I could choose only five and I would like to list both of them before I move on to the five.
The first is the Skoda Yeti and my 20,000km drive through 25 countries of Europe in less than a month. And the second was taking part in the Sachsen Classic Rally in a 1970s first-gen Volkswagen Scirocco and driving on country roads through Saxony and getting cheered on by people lined up on either side of the road for kilometres on end.
1) Buggati Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport: I am in Molsheim, at the visitors' centre next to the legendary Chateau St Jean, awaiting my turn to take the Veyron 16.4 GranSport (as the French say it) out for a spin. Emanuela Wilm, a self-confessed non-car person, tells me about the Veyron, "Just one turn of quick acceleration and then hard braking to a standstill is enough to tell you what this car is all about.”
But even if one gets up to 100kmph that whole exercise would take less than five seconds, so in my mind I scoff at the idea of getting to know what everything is all about in less than five seconds, leave aside the most complex of technological marvels that make up this car.
As I slide into the passenger seat, Pierre-Henri Raphanel, the Bugatti test driver and holder of the world record for the fastest speed clocked in a production car, introduces himself. I can't but help notice the small clock which reads from zero to 1001hp. "You can dee-stroy any car in the world," he tells me in an accent similar to Inspector Clouseau's as I look at him incredulously. "To keel dis car," he points to a small Citroen, pottering along in the distance, "All I need to do is get into the manual mode... and...".
Before he can complete the sentence all hell breaks loose. My neck which is still turned towards him is unable to turn around and see what happened. But we have already blitzed past the sedate Citroen and I silently pray that we have not "keeld" it. The acceleration would be close to 2g but the deceleration is even higher as the car comes to a stop along the road.
Pierre-Henri wants to know if I would have a go at it, for an hour or two of mayhem I think. As we switch places the Citroen sputters by, an old lady leans out and waves to Pierre. Maybe we were too fast for her to see us go past or perhaps she is used to Bugattis zipping past her.
Get set go!
I use the human launch control and acceleration is brutal. We are on a narrow country road behind a row of five or six cars and I glance imploringly at Pierre who gives me the nod and we are past the train of six cars in a flash. On the motorway I step on the gas and in the rear view mirror see the spoiler deploy.
The wing would raise itself at 220kmph and the car lowers leaving a ground clearance of just 90mm. So I glance down at the clocks to discover we are doing over 250kmph. I do not have the guts to look down at the clocks again for the few more seconds that I keep the accelerator floored.
Back at the Chateau St Jean, I am looking for Emanuela as there is one last thing that I want to tell her before we leave for Paris, but it seems she has left already. Yes, I did get to know what the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 is all about in less than five seconds and by that time I was already hooked.
2) Mercedes-Benz 300 SL: That we would be visiting the Goodwood Festival of Speed was enough to send any enthusiast into raptures and if anybody had told me that how I was going to get there would be a bigger experience than the Festival of Speed itself, I would not have believed it. But, when I arrived at the Brooklands Hotel, next to the Mercedes-Benz World, to begin my journey to Goodwood, what I saw just took my breath away.
Nearly 40 beauties from the Mercedes-Benz Classic Collection back in Stuttgart, were lined up. Starting from the cabriolets made in the early 1950s to the SLs of the 70s, 80s and even 90s, there were cars that defined many a generation and were icons of many an era.
The oldest car was the 170 S Cabriolet B, while SLs of various vintages starting way back from the iconic 300 SL coupe and going up to the 1998 SL 500 and a 1999 SL 73 AMG made up some of the newer cars. There was quality, class and value here to have made it a day for anyone. Just by looking at the cars that is.
As luck would have it, the car I got to drive was perhaps the first car I would have picked from the lot, to drive down English country roads in the peak of summer. I was handed the key to a Roadster, which turned out to be a 1960 300 SL with a canvas roof, which I promptly proceeded to put down and immediately needed help in accomplishing. The car seemed to be in perfect shape and I had the straight-six fuel injected motor running at the first turn of the key.
The wire-thin, large white steering wheel, without any power assist, felt strange at first, but I soon realised why this car, a direct descendant of one of the most iconic Mercedes of all times, was so much in demand. The over 200bhp going through to the rear wheels and no electronic aids meant that the drive was interesting to say the least but the car's racing pedigree shone through. A precise and rather slick gearshift, which I would rate as amongst the best manuals, made the car even more endearing.
The Mercedes-Benz 300 SL was the first iteration of the SL-Class grand-tourer convertibles and fast racing cars. It was introduced in 1954 as a two-seat sports car with distinctive gull-wing doors and later offered as an open roadster. The fuel-injected production model was based on the carburetted 1952 race car, the Mercedes-Benz 300SL (W194).
The "300" in its name referred to its three-litre engine displacement, and "SL" stood for Sport Leicht or Sport Light. The 300 SL was best known for its distinctive gull-wing doors and was available from March 1955 to 1957. The roadster version was launched in 1958 and production continued till 1963.
3) Lada Zhiguli – VAZ2101/BA3: One of my colleagues managed to lay his hands on an early 1970s Lada in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius and another colleague was doing a motor show in the Georgian capital of Tiblisi. When the first colleague asked me if I would be able to help him get the car to Georgia at the paris Motor Show a few years back, I told him I just had three days free and so we hit upon the idea of driving the 5,000-odd kilometres non-stop in a classic Soviet-era car to set a long distance driving record for a 1970s car.
It was one of the most interesting journeys as the car was vintage, and the route took us from Lithuania through Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and into Georgia. The car had to be nursed on the drive and eventually did break down just after we crossed the Romanian border into Bulgaria.
Luckily for us, Bulgaria was behind the iron curtain and therefore Lada country. The car broke down near a fire station and the resident mechanic there was able to get us on our way in a couple of hours. Borders were a challenge and so was driving at night with the 1970s illumination technology not being too good.
However, the car had excellent ride and a wide rear seat which served as our bed on wheels and we were able to get to Tiblisi in exactly three days and two hours. The car went on display the next day at Georgia’s biggest motor show and we were celebrities for the few hours before I had to catch the flight back to Paris.
4) Volkswagen Beetle Ultima Edicion: If ever there was an icon in the automotive world then the Beetle definitely is it! Not only has it been an integral part of the culture of many countries on at least three continents, if not more, it also has a colourful history despite somewhat dark origins.
And how often does one get to drive the original icon but a highly treasured (asking price of a million Euros) version of it? The original Beetle, or the Kafer as it was known in Germany, the Bug in the United Kingdom, Coccinelle in France, as well as the Fusca in Brazil went out of production in its home country in the late 1970s, but it continued to be produced in Mexico till 2003 (a production run spanning 65 years) where it was called the Vocho and was a favourite of the taxi trade.
However a law banning the use of two door cars as taxis signalled the end of the car till it was replaced by the new Beetle, which is now in its second generation. With over 20 million cars already produced by the start of the new century, Volkswagen decided to celebrate the end of production in style with a special edition run of 3,000 cars called the Ultima Edicion.
Out of this only 2,999 were put on sale in different markets and the last one was sent straight to the VW museum in Wolfsburg. These cars were available in only two colours, either light blue or off-white, and equipped with a 1.6-litre air cooled fuel injected boxer engines mounted at the rear like all Beetles till then, with chrome all around including bumpers, body coloured wheels with whitewall tyres and a plaque with the cars’ Ultima Edicion lineage.
When Volkswagen decided to re-launch the new Beetle in India in its 21st century guise, that is now the third generation if you take in to account the original, the new and now what is being called the 21st century Beetle, we headed to the only place where the car is produced, to drive the car. The dealer who was arranging the cars for us to drive also, as it turned out, had his own collection and his prized possession was the Ultima Edicion Beetle.
So the next day we headed out to the mountains and though it was supposed to be the original Gen I model that was supposed to be tagging along, it turned out to be the other way around.
5) Mercedes-Benz GLA: What pray tell me is special about this car, you would be sure to ask. Yes, it’s a rather small SUV from Mercedes-Benz, the smallest of their range actually. But one fine morning, we picked this car up at the Mercedes-Benz headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany and drove it all the way to the Mercedes headquarters in India at Pune.
It was an epic journey that took us east through the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, a long distance through Russia till Siberia where we turned south to Kazakhstan and then into Kyrghistan and into China where we went east again till we turned south into the Chinese autonomous region of Tibet and then into Nepal and back into India.
We drove on perfect tarmac in Europe, on gravel in central Asia, on expressways in China, on ice on the mountain stretches and into the chaos that comes with India. In Nepal, we crossed a mountain that had no road to get across and locals warned us that our car would be buried in fine mud and we would have to leave it there.
In the Xinxiang autonomous region of China, the owner of the hotel where we stayed for the night as Kashgar got so impressed with our car that he asked us to name our price for it. At the Tibet-Nepal border the guards and officials at the border refused to believe what their eyes were seeing – car with Indian number-plate driving into Nepal from China. How is that possible, he asked us?