Vintage cars - an unfinished love story

Falah Faisal | NT

What makes a car vintage? We met T.R. Raghunandan, a car enthusiast who restores vintage cars as a hobby, to find out. “Actually that’s a grey area. If you look at UK standards, they have very strict definitions - they consider cars made before 1904 as veteran, from 1904- World War I as Edwardian and anything made between then to 1930 is considered vintage, everything after that is post-vintage thoroughbred. But that classification no longer applies” he said.
“In India you have a legal definition. Any car that is 50 years or older. So any car made before 1972 and still in running condition is vintage,” he added.
Raghunandan will be talking about his experience of restoring cars at Ranga Shankara this Sunday as part of Heritage Beku, in a show titled ‘Engineering - A Love Story’. What does he love most about this? He says, “It’s hands-on work. Some work with your hands is necessary for mental development. I feel if you don’t do any work with your hands you are wasting one of your faculties. Hand-Eye coordination is an indication of intelligence.”
“I’ve met so many people who haven’t had a formal education but are master engineers because they work well with their hands,” he said. These car connections he’s made in his journey of restoring cars is one of the things he plans to talk about in his show. He has received help from people all over the world. Some of whom have become lifelong friends.
The main focus of the show though is the first car he restored - a 1948 Chevrolet Fleetmaster, which used to belong to Svetoslav Roerich and Devika Rani, for the government of Karnataka back in 2003. “That car, my wife and I restored in record time - in three months. I’ll be talking about what restoring that car did for me from an emotional perspective,” says Raghunandhan.
That isn’t all though, there is also a mystery car that he plans to talk about in the show. Which only the patron who shows up will find out about. “It is still unfinished work that I’ve been working on for 20 year. But in the process of restoring that car, I’ve met so many people and have so many fascinating stories. The fun is in telling the story and it is an unfinished love story.”
If you would like to find out what these tales of restoration are go on over to Ranga Shankara this evening and hear TR Raghunandan tell it to you himself