Future Collectible Cars of India

 

jayadevs-ss801

I read a recent article on Popular mechanics “Jay Leno Predicts Future Collectible and Classic Cars”.  I had to create a similar one based on cars available in India.  

Long Post Warning: This is another long post ( I do have to learn to write shorter ones soon).

The vehicles  I have listed match one or more of these criteria:

  • Vehicles sold in India to the mass market not imported vehicles
  • Car of the Year awarded  (typically packed with features and are usually popular).
  • Have some “first” attributed to them or some other unique characteristic, unusual engines or features or designs. Highest trim level versions are usual suspects since they have new features ahead of their time. (For e.g the Swift ZXI was the first Indian hatchback with steering mounted audio controls and climate control and airbags.)
  • Special editions / signature editions.
  • The first models  or the last models  of a car/brand.
  • 4x4s, convertibles and coupes and higher engine powered variants. 
  • Shouldn’t cost more than 15 Lakhs (ex showroom) when new.
  • Sold between 1975 till today April 20th 2009. Why 1975 ? Because that’s the year I was born. Simple ? :-).

In the order of Manufacturer/Brand I predict that in the year 2034  (25 years from now) these cars will be considered as collectible antique cars:

Fiat:

  • The 2002 Fiat Palio 1.6 Sport (Car of the year for 2002). The S10 is collectible just for the signature.
  • The Palio Adventure for being a  station wagon with go anywhere looks. Unfortunately was not a 4×4.
  • The 500 just made my list at 14.8 lakhs
  • Upcoming: I predict the Grande Punto to be a collectible just for its looks. Hope it has an engine to match.

Force Motors:

  • The Trax , Judo and the Ghurka all in 4×4 versions.

Ford:

  • The Escort 1.6 and the Orion and Iris special editions – these are rare already you cannot find cars in good condition anymore.
  • The 1999 Ford Ikon 1.6 SXI with ROCAM engine a popular enthusiasts car giving good performance for a reasonable price. 
  • The Fiesta Diesel from 2006 for having the best diesel engine from Ford. BSM Jury Award 2006. Fiesta special editions with weird stripes as well since just a few in number were released. 

General Motors/Chevrolet:

  • The Aveo U-VA. BSM Car of the year 2007. The only reason this can be a collectible is that very few actually sold.
  • The Chevvy Spark(Daewoo Matiz reborn): Best Value award for 2008. Plus it looks really good for an Indian Chevy.
  • Optra SRV:  Sporty hatchback. Very poor sales makes this a collectible.
  • Upcoming: Chevy Beat & Cruze both look good and could become really popular

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Top Car Chase & Race Movies (with free pdf)

eleanor_mustang
Eleanor the star of Gone in Sixty Seconds

Car themed movies are my favourite type. I have extended it into movies with really good car chase scenes. I have been carrying a list of around 60 movies to add to my existing collection for the past 2 years and adding them slowly one at a time when I find them. These are Hollywood movies in English and range from 1900 till 2009. I still have not built up a non-English collection (just noticed that there seems to be a good number of Japanese and French movies that fit the car theme). This weekend, I delved a bit deeper into the data of movies available and tried grouping them into categories and also sorted them by year. In the process my list of 60 suddenly became 135. I have added this list as a free pdf download. As of now, I own around 30 movies that I call car themed movies. If you have to ask who Eleanor, Bumblebee, Herbie, The Judge and General Lee are you should probably stop here and decide if you want to read the remaining.

The current decade (2000’s) seems to have the maximum number of car themed movies  and movies with car chases occupying key parts of the storyline.The next closest decade was the 70’s. We are indeed in car-crazy times :-). The 80’s and 90’s didnt seem to be that into cars, did they ?

The movies can be grouped into racing movies(including all forms of racing like NASCAR,Champ car, Drag strip, street racing, illegal racing), chase movies (car chases and crashes), Bio-pics(about famous racing legends), Horror , Drama (deeper story around car theme) and also finally about driving( typically high speed driving, stunts, long distance, getaways). Chases in movies comprise close to 35% of movies on my list and Race themed movies comprise 46% of the list. Interestingly the percentage of movies having critically acclaimed chase scenes in the 70s was around 18% and race themed movies at 76%.In the last 9 years the ratio is 57% chase scenes and 28% on race themed. The ratio has turned 180 degrees around in 30 years !

The earliest car themed movie I could find was the 1913 movie –Speed Kings, based on automobile racing. If there is anything earlier than that please let me know. There was a movie called Speed in 1935 that was also based on auto racing which was pretty popular then.

All time popular cars and movies they appeared in:

  • The Bond movie Goldfinger (1964) was the first movie the Ford Mustang appeared in (it was launched in 1964 as well). Also this was the first movie the Bond car was set as the Aston Martin DB5. The same car now owned by Spielberg appears in 2002 movie Catch Me If You Can.
  • The Herbie Series is probably the most loved series with the VW Beetle Show up in 5 movies from 1968 till 2005.
  • The DeLorean in the Back to the Future series shows up in 3 movies from 19855 to 1990.
  • The Mustang Fastback “Eleanor” shows up in two movies of the same name Gone in Sixty Seconds from 1974 & 2000. The second GISS movie seems to be the first of many car themed movies that were released after 2000.
  • Ford Mustang:  Bullit(1986),Gone in 60 Seconds(1974),Gone in 60 Seconds(2000),Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift(2006), I Am Legend( 2007), Death Race (2008)
  • Mini Cooper: Italian Job(1969),Italian Job(2001) & Bourne Identity(2002).
  • Ford Gran Torino: Charlies Angels : Fullthrottle (2004) , Starsky & Hutch (2004) and Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino (2009), Fast and Furious (2009) has a 1972 Gran Torino Sport.
  • Pontiac GTO:  Two Lane Blacktop(1971),Bullit(1986), XXX(2002). The Last Ride(2004) a TV movie featured the GTO “Judge” and also had the latest iteration of the Pontiac GTO.
  • Chevrolet Corvette: 1970 Corvetter in Death Race 2000(1973), 1973 Stingray in Corvette Summer (1978)
  • Chevrolet Camaro:  Transformers (2007) had the 1977 and 2009 Camaros, 2 Fast 2 Furious(2003) had a 1969 Camaro, 2009 Fast and Furious has a 1973 Camaro.
  • Dodge Charger: Dirty Mary Crazy Larry(1974),The Fast and the Furious (2001),Dukes of Hazzard(2005) – “The General Lee”
  •  Dodge Challenger: Vanishing Point(1971), 2 Fast 2 Furious(2003)
  • Scary Cars: Modified 1971 Lincoln Continental in The Car(1977), 1958 Plymouth Fury in Christine(1983) , 1954 Buick Roadmaster in From a Buick 8(Upcoming movie for 2009). 
  • Upcoming Car Themed movies for 2009 and beyond are:
    • From a Buick 8 ( Horror movie based on a scarily good Stephen King book expected in 2009)
    • Transformers II: Revenge of the Fallen (The transformers sequel expected around June 2009)
    • Cars II (The sequel to Pixar Cars expected in 2012)
    • The Limit( A movie on Grand Prix racing with Toby Maguire expected in 2012)

    (Do check up on www.carsplusmovies.com for more updates. Its a great site with tonnes of car movie related links. I got the above list from there.)

    Download: You can download my list of movies as a free PDF file download. Do take a look and let me know if you come across any good car themed movie I may have missed from the list. Also do pass on the pdf to your friends who may be interested.

     

     

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Most Popular Vehicle Colors – 2000 to 2008

DuPont  releases data on vehicle color popularity for major markets across the world and in 2008 have included India data separately. I hope it will be tracked going forward as well.  Here is the DuPont report for 2008. Lots of interesting data point there including variants on core color types, finishing, textures etc. While mentioning the textures something very interesting is Chrome finish paint. An example is seen here.

They have been tracking such data for US, Europe and Japan for close to ten years now. Though they haven’t given it in one single chart – Zimbly Cars spent the time to collate it from data made public by DuPont.  Here is the trend for the past 8 years. 

1-colorspost-global

**2001 – I wasn’t able to find data for this year on the net – if anyone has it or knows someone in DuPont please let me know.

The most popular colors over the past 8 years for cars are White, Silver, Black and Blue. These have been fairly consistent and have not lost their charm over time.

0-colorspost-mostpopular

Red has been a consistent color with no changes in popularity since 2004. Grey has been steadily increasing in popularity since 2004 and may be a serious contender to Black.

Black though considered a timeless color went through a small dip in popularity between 2002 and 2005 but has been increasing in popularity since 2005.

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Indian Market – New Vehicles Available (Part 1)

I have always been curious about the mass of information available in Auto magazines and the Internet on the various vehicle brands, models, variants, body-styles and price segments currently available in India.  I realized there was a lot of reference material available but nothing consolidated in one place. So I went about collecting as much as I could. So here it goes- My study on new vehicle types currently available for a buyer in the Indian market and primarily focused on Chennai. Most prices used are Chennai ex-showroom prices with some vehicles using a Mumbai price. I spent some time trying to categorize the vehicles by their price brackets and found it wasn’t easy to do but here’s my shot at it. 

A Maruti 800
Image via Wikipedia

 I call the various groups “segments” just to minimize confusion and they start at A with the cheapest and smallest vehicles with the least number of features and move through B, C and D where the cost , size and feature list increases.Beyond a price of 25 Lakhs I have called the segment as a “Z” segment which comprises the true luxury vehicles available in India.

The ASegment starts off currently with the Maruti 800 – but soon I will have to update it with the Tata Nano.

This grouping will be used all through my subsequent posts. Have a look at the following graph for the starting price points for the various segments and a more detailed sub section as well.

1-subsegments 

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