The other day, an acquaintance called, seeking information about bodyshop workers who could effect a sunroof modification in his regular city car. The desire to put in a feature outside a regular passenger car’s price band is so common that it often seems natural. The sought-after feature may be utilitarian and hidden from the public gaze. Or, it may be loud and style-enhancing and give every passer-by a rubber neck. Sometimes, the mod job does both, and the ‘reworked’ car gets a sporty look and feel.
Until a few years ago, in India, people would buy a used Mitsubishi Lancer for its sleek design and reasonably powerful engine and carry out a mod job to make it sound and look like a machine born for the race track. Modifications were inspired by races of regular cars modified to predetermined specifications. Remember those ‘race-ready’ Premier Padminis and Maruti Esteems on the thoroughfares of Indian metros?
However, these ‘racers on the road’ sought to ape the real racers. For example, on the inside, an Esteem on race duty at Irungattukottai would have a roll cage. And obviously, an Esteem pretending to be a racer would be devoid of this feature.
So, from time to time, certain automobile firms have risen on the horizon, to meet a demand for an affordable car that offered a few essential features of a sports-racing machine, but also served very well as a regular travel companion on city roads.
In India, there is a ready example — the two-seater San Storm. The small convertible made by San Motors India Limited came at an attractive price. About 10 years ago, I got to have a sense of what this car was all about during a car rally, where sculptor and car collector Mani Nagappa displayed his San Storm .
San Motors had judiciously economised on the instrument cluster and a few less-conspicuous elements such as the handles, to keep the price of the car within most car buyers’ reach.
It had a 1.2-litre Renault D-type engine and managed only about 60 bhp. With a compact frame and a lightweight fibreglass body, it had a decent power-to-weight ratio, an essential feature of a sports car.
However, according to users, at higher speeds, the car was not so much fun to drive. Though San Storm managed to only barely scratch the ‘affordable sports car’ market in India, the interest it generated showed that such machines provided a happy alternative for those who did not have the energy, time, or inclination to have a regular car modified to behave somewhat like a sports machine.
The history of sports cars across the globe is replete with such examples. In his book, The Complete Encyclopedia of Sports Cars: Classic Era , Rob De La Rive Box unearths a few small, obscure automobile companies that had sought to tap into the sports cars market. One of them is Mandarini from the 1950s. For me, this is the most striking of the lot. It is an Italian company that built sports cars with Fiat’s famous 1,100 cc engine. This is the same engine that went into the popular Fiat Elegant and Fiat Millecento and later the much-loved Premier Padmini.
Rob De La Rive Box gives two salient features of small players like Mandarini that made racing-sports cars in the Italy of the 1940s and 1950s. “They used converted and tuned 500 or 1,000 Fiat engines (depending on the class for which the car was intended) and their names ended in ‘..ini’.”
Another interesting example provided by Rob comes from Germany: How Hans Glas cashed in on a demand for inexpensive automobiles, including affordable sports cars, in the Germany of the 1960s. Hans and his eponymous cars ran out of luck soon, but his effort clearly underlined a trend.
