The Hindu Business Line : <I>History on old wheels </I>

We all know that age wins respectability for men and greater demand for wine. The same goes with well-maintained vintage cars and their owners. But what if the one-time owner of a vintage vehicle happens to be a villain of history? Does it win him any rehabilitation? Certainly it tempers the unmitigated hate. And so it was at the recent Statesman Vintage and Classic Car Rally, an event with a 30-year history but which I was witnessing for the first time. Till now, I had had only fleeting glances of the graceful Oldies on the road or on television. But watching these colourful, curvaceous beauties in `steel and leather' winding their winsome ways from the rain-swept street on to the rally route was an exhilarating experience.

Mercifully, the night-long drizzle had stopped. The mercury at 14 degrees Celsius and the cold winds blowing into one's face all but transported one to exotic Europe, as if ordered for the machines built in England, the Continent and America. As they rolled out one after another, it was a march of history before the `mind's eye,' bringing back long-forgotten events. The first to emerge was the 1914 John Morris fire-engine owned by the Railway Museum, the year reminding one of the outbreak of the First World War.

The more than 100 that followed — Citroens, Wolseleys, Austins, Chevrolets, Fords, Studebakers, Buicks, Rovers, Rolls-Royces, Fiats, Morrises, Bentleys, and Dodges — straddled the two Wars, 1914 to 1945. One particular Studebaker, a pugnacious-looking green machine, apparently belonged to Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. "There goes the killer car," shouted the commentator, as the 1930 model rolled out.

"Godse had driven it to the prayer meeting where he fired the fatal shots that killed the Father of Nation," the car's current owner said.

(The author, a former deputy editor of PTI, is a New Delhi-based freelance journalist. Feedback can be sent to rajamani_rc@yahoo.co.uk)