Delhi's 'Vintage and Classic Car Rally' is four decades old. To mark the 2008 event the Statesman issued a supplement on 2nd March that had many stalwarts going down memory lane. There was the allure of an Austin for someone, as also the 'Harley' burly over the famed 'phat-phat', apart from the annual pilgrimage for one participant and perspective of '40 years on the circuit' for another.

As for me I was looking back 20 years to the day when I drove in a friend 's Adler Cabriolet of 1935 vintage. (Incidentally, German cars have been a rarity.) For the rallyists, there was a cocktail party the previous evening in Mr C.R. Irani's house on Tughlak Road and our Adler went on to win the prize for coming from the furthest point of travel - from Nagpur . My friend and owner of that German car, 'Dada' Adhikari, was overwhelmed because the front page of the Statesman carried a photograph of him with his dear possession. He became an instant celebrity in the Orange City!

And so to this year's Rally and to a starkly different picture. Most importantly Statesman now has a stately Office. The charm of driving has been dented by the Capitals road-raged drivers, the innumerable fly-overs, traffic intersections and one-way rules making Delhi a city where only eagles dare. On that March 2nd morning when I reached Barakhamba road in my 1961 model Standard Herald I had not realized that the car qualified as a 'classic'. The organizers hurriedly issued a number to me and so my wife and I joined the rally route 'in a creation which almost defied time and description'. Ours is a convertible Herald, thanks to Steve Preston, an old colleague from my Royal Navy days of the 1950s in the U.K. He sent me an old frame of a Triumph Herald which was fitted by Quadir's Garage in Malviya Nagar making our possession, possibly the only one of her kind East of Suez!

Our regret was that by the time Car No 85 was flagged off, the Army Chief had departed. More the pity because General Kapoor, a cadet in the NDA in 1967, would have been delighted to see at the wheel a 75 year old me, his old Instructor in the Academy.

But talking of vintages and classics, I too had an old 1947 MG two-seater sports car back in 1961, Red of course. I was then posted in Naval Headquarters as the Naval Chief's Flag Lieutenant or ADC. My unforgettable memory is of driving the Admiral one mid-morning in the 'old buggy' from South Block to the Defence Minister's house at 19 Teen Murti Road. At very short notice Mr Krishna Menon wanted to see him and the official naval car was not immediately at hand so I offered to take the 'old man' in mine. Those were not times of security concerns and as we drove into the bungalow, the Minister was waiting in the verandah. Believe it or not, famous for his 'sang froid', VKKM didn't show the least bit of surprise on seeing one of his Service Chiefs emerging from a vintage sports car.

Post Script: When we were expecting our first child my wife had difficulty in tackling the MG's long clutch and brake pedals. Besides, a two-seater would not do as a family car and we concluded time had come to dispose off that beauty. We were allotted a Standard Herald out of the government quota and so an ad was placed in the newspapers, 'owner of an MG sports car, after many years of delightful driving, reluctantly offers it for sale because of a nagging wife'. It was politely returned by the Editor for "deletion of the last two offending words"!