Photoshop is an amazing tool. With a click of the mouse you can erase wrinkles, flatten a stomach or make a middle-aged woman look like a supermodel. We human beings also have our own built in Photoshop that dresses up reality beautifully. Called nostalgia, these rose-tinted glasses become doubly effective with the passing of a thing or person.
Case in point, the good old Amby. Ignored, run down and often severely criticised, all this changed when the last Ambassador rolled out of the Uttarpara plant on May 24 this year. As soon as the news was made public, the nation plunged into sepia-tinted nostalgia.
Like many people who had owned or driven one in the past, we too scrambled to drive down memory lane. Our search for three of the first cars in the series took us to Pune one balmy summer morning. Using Pune’s recently redone council hall as an appropriately ‘sarkari’ backdrop, we immediately encountered a ton of nostalgic government employees. They interrupted our shoot, fished out their phone cameras and came up and shared stories with us.
The car that gets the most attention, naturally, is the black Landmaster. An Ambassador in everything but name, the 1954 Landmaster, or Morris Oxford Series II, came with a semi-monocoque chassis that allowed it to be very spacious on the inside. The car cost Rs 10,000 when it was launched in 1954.
