Heritage on Wheels Exhibition & the COVID 19 Lockdown of Nehru Science Centre.
Amidst an unprecedented heightened fear and dime a dozen information - most of which unfortunately is infodemic - that is getting played out in the social media and so also in the electronic and print media on the COVID 19, which has been declared a pandemic by the WHO, authorities across India have been compelled to take precautions including shutting down public spaces and museums. Our centre too has been closed for visitors from today. Just a couple of days ago - on 13th March - silently, without much fanfare, we had opened an exhibition on CoronaVirus and another new exhibition ‘ Heritage on Wheels’, with a hope that these two exhibitions will help us in compensating the fall in visitors to our centre, post the COVID scare. Unfortunately COVID -19 has played spoilsport and we have been compelled to close our centre for the larger interest of the public health safety of our visitors. Hopefully the COVID scare will pass and we will soon open our centre and the Vintage Cars exhibition to public at the earliest.
Heritage Automobiles - vintage cars - exhibition has always attracted huge eyeballs and this has been our experience in the past two ‘Heritage on Wheels’ exhibitions, which we had organised at our centre. The artistically crafted, elegant moving beauties, painstakingly restored and maintained by their respective passionate owners, have no parallels in contemporary auto market. Even while most modern car manufacturers announce new range of cars every year, the craze for ageless beauties of yesteryears remains unparalleled. It is with this premise that the Nehru Science Centre, in collaboration with Vintage and Classic Car Club of India (VCCCI), has been organising the "Heritage on Wheels: Vintage Car" exhibition for the past three years and this year this exhibition got off to a soft opening, on the 13th March in the presence of several proud owners of these ageless beauties and other guests.
On display in the exhibition are 40 (27 cars and 13 motorcycles) ageless beauties, manufactured during the period from 1900 to 1950s. The assortment of cars on display include the Jaguar, Rolls Royce, Cadillac, Bentley, MG, Premier, Triumph, Shelly Cobra, Volkswagen, Austin, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Ford, Chrysler, Rover, Lincoln, Morgan etc. These cars belong to the period referred to as the golden age of design in which most of the cars were aesthetically designed with artistic flavour and were exquisitely engineered to transcend transportation to become a work of artistic creativity. The artistic elegance of these ageless moving beauties can be compared with the best of rolling sculptures, and to see them is to think, “these cars belongs to an art gallery.”
Automobiles have always fascinated Indians. The biennial Auto Expo, which was last held at Noida, from Feb 9-14, 2018 had attracted more than 6,00,000 visitors. When one goes back in history, we will notice that automobile industry is a marker to the design ingenuity and creativity of mankind. This industry is now destined for a paradigm shift with an ever increasing brain power that is continuing to be machined into the modern automobiles (cars) by their makers to make the next generation cars - the thinking cars.
Notwithstanding an unprecedented pace at which newer and newer developments are taking place in the Auto industry, there has never been any reduction in the curiosity and interest among the people, in wanting to see the vintage cars - ageless beauties. It is for this reason that the Nehru Science Centre has joined hands with Vintage and Classic Car Club of India (VCCCI) to present some of these ageless beauties to the visitors in the form of an exhibition "Heritage on Wheels”. This is the third consecutive year that we are organising this exhibition, which unfortunately has been temporarily closed due to COVID 19 scare and we hope to open it to the visitors as soon as the situation improves.
The automobile design has not evolved in a vacuum. It has also stood on the ‘shoulders of the giants’ and borrowed ideas and thoughts from other industries and from popular culture, to adopt these ideas in the design of the automobiles. Whatever was handy, trendy or so called sexy, was fair game for the designers to incorporate in their designs. Automobile designers incorporated aspects of Art Deco and Art Moderne into their styling in the 30's. Streamlining, a catchword that had much less to do with aerodynamics than with shapes, was also incorporated in these beauties, besides incorporating design influences from nature.
The “Heritage on Wheels” exhibition presents a range of artistically designed models of cars that were produced by creative team of designers, inventors, manufacturers and engineers who combined to create these early automobile beauties, which continue to attract people. The end-product reflects the marriage between the beauty of line and mechanical ingenuity. These vintage cars of yesteryear’s come with speed and elegance clubbed with a perfect combination of line and curve that makes these cars so very beautiful and aesthetically stunning. The delicate ness with which these cars are transported for the exhibition shows the extraordinary care that each of the owners have for their classic cars.
The early carmakers at the turn of the 20th century, not only cared for their cars to be reliable but were equally concerned for the look of their machines. The cars of the last century looked more like the horseless carriages. It took a while before these mechanised buggies sprouted fixed roofs, and very much longer before many of the exposed parts were pulled together in one, more or less, smoothly integrated designs. The book “Moving Beauty: A Century in Automobile Design” by Musee Des Beaux-Arts De Montreal chronicles the excellence achieved by the early car makers.
The importance of art, which was exemplified by the early car designers, continue to remain relevant even in modern times. The overwhelming success of most of Apple products owe their genesis to the artistic looks that are embedded in the apple products, which was the mantra of its founder Steve Jobs. Perhaps Steve Jobs likened himself and his employees to the automobile designers who were as good as artists. Jobs deployed his mercurial personality in the ruthless way that artists sometimes do to incorporate a perfect combination of line and curve, which the early car manufacturers had used, in his Apple products, the results of which are there for everyone to see.
Long before it became a trend in Europe to own the trendy vintage cars, India’s maharajas were collecting cars – mainly because they bought so many and never really got around to selling any of the cars, which they bought. Although these vintage classic cars have an extraordinary market value and are measured in monitory terms, in India however, they continue to be a pride of ownership primarily because most of these vintage classic cars come with history sentimentality and nostalgia.
Most Maharajas in India were extravagantly rich and preferred to buy large numbers of premier cars - Rolls Royce (RR) and such other cars particularly during the period 1921 and 1939. The Indian Maharajas accounted for about 25 per cent of RR’s global production. Since the maharajas were very fussy and demanding buyers, Rolls-Royce had a special production line for them, called the Maharaja specials. There is also an anecdote of an Indian King, Jai Singh, Maharaja of Alwar, who was snubbed at Rolls Royce showroom in London, compelling him to buy 6 of these luxury RR Cars, which he subsequently shipped to India. When these vehicles arrived in India Jai Singh ordered the Alwar municipality to use the luxury cars to transport and collect garbage around the city. The word of Rolls Royce cars collecting garbage in India spread like wildfire. People who used to drive their Rolls Royce cars with pride and joy were now embarrassed to drive them knowing the same luxury cars were being used to collect garbage in India. The reputation of Rolls Royce dropped rapidly all over the world. The people at Rolls Royce finally realized their mistake and sent a telegram to Jai Singh rendering their apology for the way he was treated at the London showroom. They also offered him six more cars, for free. The Maharaja accepted this gesture and his municipality stopped using the luxury cars for collecting trash.
Most owners of the vintage cars that are part of the ‘Heritage on Wheels’ exhibition at the Nehru Science Centre have their own stories about their ageless beauties, which accentuate the beauty of these cars. Hope the COVID fear dies down soon so that we can throw open the doors of our science centre to our visitors and enable them to enjoy this exhibition during their visit to our centre.
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