By Danny M Pariat
The news that Hindustan Motors was folding up did not come as a shock. The Ambassador car was quite a unique machine – reliable and yet unreliable at the same time. Quite safe when it came to collisions but quite frustrating when it came to some of it’s important functions like the windshield wipers, the headlights and the brakes, not to mention the badly calibrated body. The two main noises that emanated from the car were the rattle of the steering rattle and the noise from the squeaking rubber bushings when dry so one had to put in brake oil on them or wait for a shower to stop the noise.
A powerful torch was always kept in the car as one never knew when the head lights would pack up. One night, returning from leave with the wife and a baby daughter, I had to drive the last 50 miles to the estate using a torch to light the way – the head lights just went off and refused to come on again.
The wipers were the most unreliable as they would simply drop off just when one was driving through heavy rain.
Many a young planter had a car with holes in the floor board and always boasted that this was natural air conditioning.
For those driving in the hills the brakes provided them with many a nightmare -one simply did not know if the brakes would hold when stopping on a slope. Often drivers had to use the side walls or side drains as ‘brakes’ to stop the car from rolling back.
However, having said the above, the old Amby, as it was fondly known, had it’s plus points. It has saved many a tea planter’s life with its rugged body and big engine in front. Many were the times when planters driving back from the club or a ‘do’ late at night and floating on cloud nine had crashed head-on on giant sized bullocks or buffaloes standing in the middle of the road. The bumpers and mud guards would get bent and the bonnet would fly off but the occupants were always safe. The same could, of course, not be said of the bullock or the buffalo. There were instances when a planter would misjudge the width of a bridge and instead of driving on the bridge would, instead, actually hit one of the side railings. While the car would go right off, the passengers were always safe though somewhat shaken and bruised.
Once a young planter, returning from a ‘do’ from a nearby town was rushing back in his car and, being late for factory duty, was really pushing his car to the limit. To his great shock, the bonnet, with a loud screech, opened up from the front and came back flush against the windshield. Being late for work he could not afford to stop so in desperation, he carried on driving by poking his head out of the window and made it back on time – thereafter his friends honoured him by giving him the nick name ‘Bonnet’.
Many years ago in the Jorhat area, the favourite competition amongst the young planters after coming out of the club late at night was to see who could take off the rear tyre of a truck by using their Ambassador cars – trucks were rickety old things back then but even so, many cars were wrecked so that companies had to issue instructions banning such activities – the amazing thing was that hardly any planters were ever hurt in these competitions. Possibly just plain good luck or perhaps Bacchus was keeping a wary eye over them.
In Shillong many tourists had nightmarish but unique rides in a Shillong Ambassador taxi as the number of passengers would go up to as many as 21 in a single car – of course, that included about 4 or 5 in the booth!!
Once an elderly Khasi gentleman who had been unwell but who still had a powerful voice, was asked how he was keeping. He replied ” I’m just like those ambassador taxis running between Iewduh and Jaiaw – most things are rattling and not working but the horn is still strong”
The story goes that in a competition in heaven an award was to be given to the makers of a car that would make the drivers utter the name of God the most and the Ambassador manufacturers won hands down. It was discovered that Ambassador drivers were the most religious as with so many things wrong with the car, drivers driving an Ambassador uttered the words ‘Oh God’ the most.
Now that production of the good old Amby has stopped, may it rest in peace having saved innumerable lives and having given an unknown number of people their share of thrills and nightmares and for having stood for so long as a symbol of the local versus the alien and the old against the new.