India’s fledgling, but promising, vintage and classic car restoration industry is facing a regulation ‘pothole’. Even as restorers and collectors of these heritage vehicles have worked tirelessly to raise the standard of hand-built restoration to international standards, the blanket ban on older vehicles in some of the metros like Delhi is threatening to stall the business.

Senior restorers are claiming that apathetic or ignorant cops are simply towing away and impounding heritage vehicles under the pretext of implementing the law. Heritage car- and bike-owners in the National Capital Region are affected even more due to the tug-of-war between the regulators, the government and the car/bike-owners.

Two years ago, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) passed a resolution to ban all vehicles that are more than 15 years old from the roads of NCR. The order, and a later version — which did a downward revision to ban 10-year-old diesel vehicles — are still being considered for implementation by the police. But the Centre earlier this year moved the Supreme Court against the order.

So while the regulation is being fine-tuned, these decades-old moving monuments are only rarely taken out on drives and are being clubbed with smoke-belching teenaged cars that are regulars on the road.

Says CS Ananth, Advisor - Legislation for the Fédération Internationale des Véhicules Anciens (FIVA): “Historic vehicles are India’s heritage and they have to be preserved. The Indian government banned the export of historic vehicles, and it is only logical that the law then enables the preservation of such vehicles.”

Ananth, who is himself a well-known restorer, points out that historic vehicles are generally very expensive to own and maintain. But collectors restore and preserve them in pristine condition due to sentimental reasons such as a history of family ownership. Some of them have started to convert their passionate hobbies into a full-fledged business by actively seeking out dilapidated vintage and classic cars which they can then restore to their original glory.

By the very nature of their being unique, hand-restored examples of automobiles of yore, historic vehicles are driven on public roads only rarely. They are almost never used for commuting and so, their contribution to air pollution is negligible.

FIVA, a 50-year-old body under the official patronage of UNESCO, and representing 1.5 million historic vehicle-owners in 62 countries, has submitted a memorandum to the government seeking an amendment to the Motor Vehicles Act. The suggested change could then allow historic vehicles to be exempt from pollution checks and excluded from bans applicable to regular polluting vehicles. The body is suggesting having a separate registry for historic vehicles, with a provision for uniform life tax and laws for selective use of these vehicles on the lines of similar regulations existing in other developed automobile markets.

Until the Act is amended, historic car- and bike-owners in NCR are a harried lot. Public parking is out of bounds for them where many have returned to find the car or bike disappeared. Others are accosted on the road by the police with the very real threat of losing possession. The bigger worry is other cities like Mumbai and Chennai, with a fairly large population of heritage vehicles, following suit.

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