The Delight Story

It’s been about 30 years since we had a Premier Padmini home and with recent restoration stories on the rise, I too felt like reliving the old memories all over again. I saw one up close & almost finalized the deal but alas, had to let go. More on that later.

 Our Padmini story dates back to the early ’90s. My father got a used 1979 Premier Padmini home for about Rs.30,000/- (Just about 430USD only). That’s all the money we could afford. I was in 5^th grade, running all over the house in excitement and my mother was in 7^th heaven running behind me. And why not? We got our first car home!  The day the car came home, I thoroughly cleaned the car, did my homework inside the car and even slept on the dusty rear seat overnight. The next day morning I woke up to the sight of our first ever gleaming white car parked in our veranda. I pestered my father to go for a short drive, but he got busy. A week passed by and all I did was admire our static car from all sides and various angles. The next weekend arrived; we were all dressed up to flaunt the car in our neighbourhood.  It was indeed a matter of pride to own a car in those days.  Guess what?  The car did not start. The battery went dead. We were disappointed. In the coming months, we soon realized that we had signed up for a course in automobile engineering by example. Since the car we bought was over a decade old, it came with its own share of problems and wasn’t a particularly well-kept example. The carburettor tuning had a problem and would constantly backfire. The car wouldn’t climb out of our parking area to the road when cold. Had to warm up enough to gain power. The battery would constantly drain out due to faulty wiring, would constantly pull either left or right when brakes got applied and if this wasn’t enough, also had an occasion when the brake pedal suddenly sank as the brake fluid leaked leading to a brake failure! With such a reliability record, we even made a daring attempt to go on a long drive of about 400kms only to be standard in the first 40 km on the roadside due to the engine oil pressure pipe failure. 

By today’s standards, by now the car would have been junked. But my father never gave up. We just couldn’t afford anything else in any case. The car went through multiple makeovers in a town called Vijaywada in Andhra Pradesh and finally, it took about 2 years for a complete restoration. The car saw two different shades of paint and a complete mechanical and upholstery overhaul. It’s to date is a mystery as to how much did my father spend on this car to bring it back to shape. With cold start rituals not being a problem anymore, sometime in the year 1994, we mustered the courage to do a short 120km drive to a hill station near home. we expected the car to overheat. Also, burdened by the past, we used engine braking to the fullest to go downhill. The car performed flawlessly, and the brakes worked. Delighted by her first trouble-free ride my mother named the car after sir ‘Edmund Hillary’. The joy was nothing short of climbing up Mt. Everest & back. Buoyed by renewed confidence, we undertook multiple trips down south and now the reliability wasn’t a concern at all. The car took all that Indian roads or lack of them had to offer. By then I was growing up to be an ambitious young man with a passion for automobiles. No formal automobile course would have taught me what this car did. I did preventive maintenance on this car myself. I also mastered my driving skills on this car. The biggest virtue that I learnt out of this car was patience and perseverance which became the guiding principle for my career.

With Padmini becoming one of the most affordable classic cars that money could buy, I came across a 1971 Fiat 1100 Delight recently. At a quoted price of about Rs. 1,30,000/- I almost bought it, but soon realized that this was a project car and not a ready to flaunt car that I would want at this price. Hence let it go. Till I find my kind of a pristine example, ‘Hillary’ shall remain my delight story.