When I got the opportunity to visit an exhibition of vintage cars organised by 21 Guns Salute next to Leisure Valley, sector 29, Gurgaon on the twenty-second, I could barely stop myself from hopping from one vintage car to another. I was able to see the most well kept Silver Ghost and Silver Phantom models including one that I very strongly felt was similar to the Rolls Royce cars that Lawrence of Arabia had used while traversing the sands of that part of the world. I also saw some of the most well polished and immaculate radiator caps, also known as the flying lady.
One particular vehicle that attracted my particular attention was not any one of the two Volkswagen Beetles ( That my father had had as his third car) but a rather strange looking vehicle in military green that had been manufactured in 1939. Unlike the Beetle, this particular model had a water cooled engine. It was neither a Kubbelwagon, nor even a beetle, but something much more mysterious!
Of course what was missing from the exhibition was the Citroen Deux Cheveux a two cylinder air cooled vehicle which was the beetle of France in yesteryears. However what made up for the absence of the two cylinder Citroen was a two cylinder Rover, with the two cylinder heads poking out of specially built air scoops in the boxer configuration.
This Rover has two cylinders and you can see the cylinder heads sticking out sideways out of specially built scoops. Must have been air cooled?
The versatile jeep was present in all its avatars at the exhibition, as the military version that General Patton might have been driven in, The Willeys as it was affectionately known and I remember my father telling me that the jeep could be made to haul a carriage on a railway track since its rims could fit railway tracks. What astounded me the most however to see a plough fitted behind one of the jeeps! Imagine fitting a plough to one of your Boleros, or XUVs, or even a Safari!
I honestly did not know that you could use the jeep to plough the field!
The Car cum boat was yet another must see for me especially because I must have seen a few of these on the roads in Ethiopia, but don’t remember them now. These car cum boats, it is said could run both on land as well as water.
Going for a swim?
If poetry might be made of these beauties, then play on!
If I am not very wrong, then this was a sports car that had won a few races at Le Mans!
There were a number of antique motorcycles at the exhibition, and sure I did recall hearing from others that one of my uncles rode a Great Indian Chief Motorcycle, while another rode a BSA. The Lamberetta I had ridden a couple of times during my college days. The military version of the Harley Davidson seemed to be all muscle.
The Beamer I can recognize, but then what might be this contraption in the foreground?
Of course who can forget the wartime Harley Davidson?
I could go on pasting photographs after photographs of classic beauties that would win the hearts of even the most serious minds, but then the constraints of space force me to limit their numbers.
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