JOIN USWhen the Ambassador car was born in 1957 to a newly independent India, it was the height of style and status.
It was standard issue to senior civil servants and government officials; its possession implied status, and its ubiquity was a sign of an earlier, seemingly simpler India.
The country’s highly protectionist economy also made it one of the few cars on the road, with a singular design that has often been compared to a bowler hat.
But that icon of the Indian road may have reached the end of the line, pushed from its dominance by changing consumer tastes, an opening marketplace for automobiles and fierce competition. In May, the car’s manufacturer, Hindustan Motors announced that it would suspend production of its Ambassador, the final stage in a long decline.
As far back as 1999, Hindustan Motors reported a $9.5 million loss from the lone remaining plant in West Bengal, partly because of an outsized workforce. In the year that ended in March 2014, just 2,200 Ambassadors were sold, according to Reuters. In the year that ended in September 2013, the company reported losses exceeding its net worth.
In their statement announcing the shutdown, Hindustan Motors cited a “lack of demand” for the Ambassador and a shortage of funds, as well as “growing indiscipline” among factory workers at the West Bengal plant.
In the 1980s, Maruti introduced the Alto 800, an underpowered but inexpensive hatchback that brought car ownership to the masses. In the 1990s when the economy was liberalized, the Indian car market slowly opened up to faster, more convenient options.
“The death of the Ambassador may have formally been announced earlier last month, but in reality the Ambassador vanished from Indian roads 10 years ago,” said Siddharth Varadarajan, a journalist who owns three Ambassadors.
The virtual monopoly that Hindustan Motors possessed for decades, he said, was the car’s undoing.
“There was never any incentive for Hindustan Motors to improve the product,” Varadarajan said. “They were a highly myopic company.” The company, however, has maintained that the halting of its production is temporary, and that the plant in West Bengal will eventually reopen.
It is the car of Nehruvian India, its white, be-curtained iteration the conveyance of dignitaries including, at times, the president.
In this sense, the Ambassador holds the singular distinction of being one of the few vehicles whose mention evokes power, elegance and something pleasingly retro, even as its manifestation, in the form of taxis and government vehicles in Calcutta and Delhi, often borders on disrepair.
Drivers complain that pedals break off after a few thousand miles, that the air-conditioners malfunction. Some use turmeric to stop up holes in the radiator; anything to avoid servicing with expensive and increasingly rare parts. Many carry water bottles to cool off radiators that frequently overheat.
But the fondness for some drivers, whose cars took them through decades of India’s history, seems to overpower any inconvenience.
V P Verma, a retired engineer, parks his mint green Ambassador proudly outside his south Delhi home. He said the waiting list for the car when his father, a district administrative officer in Bihar, bought it in 1962 was five years.