Yesterday while driving near the Race course, I saw a Ford Figo with a board of Central Income Tax Commissioner or whatever in the red board that you are so used to being seen as a sign of those powerful Central Bureaucrat.

But I wasnt amused. the car was so tiny that it fails to evoke the respect forget the fear which would come out later. The charm of a white Ambassador cannot be equaled by any car for sure, its is a sad ending for the car that they will no longer be producing them anytime from now.  But the loss is not just ornamental, its a culture that we will soon see vanishing.

The Ambassador or the amby as it was called was a sign of prosperity those days and people have told me that they had waited anywhere between 8 months and 2 years to own one. I remember only a doctor owning a car in our new locality and that was a white Ambassador some 30 years ago.

The Ambassador was a delight to watch in a convoy and every politician worth his name would have had this car for sure. It gives you the smell of power especially if you happen to have a car with a red beacon on top.

This was the national car if you call it, imagine the Rajpath morning on an Independence day or the Republic Day, the convoy of white red beacon lit ambys make for such a great sight. It was also touted to be one of the safest cars around. If you have any doubt, you should check with Chandrababu Naidu, the present chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, whose car escaped a land mine explosion and he was unhurt too some years ago.

These days no one talks high of bucket seats, those were standard in Ambys.

Some of the trivia on Amby include it being exported to Japan and UK for being a taxi. On the other hand it won hands down in the clash of Indian and world taxis in a shoot out video for Top Gear programme in BBC.

I believe Rajinikanth the superstar and Mammooty the malayalam star use Amby as their regular car. The car which was a part of heritage and history will no longer be around after few years, but the memories it evokes could quite be an emotional one. It was a part of growing up for me.

Big cars, no redesign for over 50 years and ruled the roost as a taxi on some metros and then some cities, now will see them as a nostalgic piece on road.

We will be seeing them on movies in the future if someone is making them in retro, where we can see the collector getting down from a white Ambassador car. Then it will be travelling back in time!

(By the way the title was one I had used earlier and I liked it and so I thought will go with the same.)

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