Five generations and one Ford V8

Text: Ravi Avalur   

Images: Vrutika Doshi

When my great-great-grandmother, Gulbai Manchersha Disana, bought this old beauty, it set her back Rs 3,444 and 14 annas. In 1937, an anna meant something; today, the unit no longer even exists, and I confess I had to look up how much - or how little - it was worth.

Gulbai herself was no conventional figure. At the turn of the twentieth century, she ran Woonwalla & Co., a trading firm in Hong Kong - a remarkable role for an Indian woman of her generation. The car may well have been funded by her father, Pestonjee Wadia. Wadia was a Freemason who entered Lodge Rising Sun in 1871 and, as a member of the Municipal Corporation, was actively involved in the civic life of Bombay. It was at his suggestion that the city adopted the motto "Urbs Prima in Indis" – the first city of India.

Her choice of car was equally individual. A Phaeton was not simply a convertible: it had no permanent roof or wind-up windows, only a folding fabric top and cumbersome detachable side curtains that offered scant protection from the weather. Its open cabin could scarcely be secured.

By 1937, when enclosed cars and proper convertible sedans were readily available, the Phaeton was already disappearing - a beautiful fair-weather machine far better suited to life as a second car than to everyday transport. Nor was its engine conventional. At a time when the British cars familiar in India tended to rely on small, frugal four-cylinder engines, the Ford's 221-cubic-inch (3,622 cc), 85 bhp V8 was an extravagant piece of American engineering. In Bombay's monsoon climate, this combination of an exposed Phaeton body and a large V8 was both wonderfully eccentric and entirely in character.

The original purchase receipt preserves that fraction. Alongside it, the registration book and the BMW 6064 registration plate - the BMW prefix belonged to Bombay's registration series and has nothing to do with the German marque - are tangible pieces of history. I am the fifth generation of my family to own and drive her. That continuity may be almost as rare as the car itself. Only 3,723 examples were made in this Phaeton body style, and this right-hand-drive car, built by the Ford Motor Company of Canada, is rarer still, and one of very few survivors.

Rarity, however, was never the attraction. I have simply loved her since I was a boy. I dreamt of restoring her to pristine condition, but the circumstances that would allow me to begin - being back in India, finding the time and locating the right expertise - came together only in 2010. That year, I put the Ford on a truck, brought her from Poona to Delhi and began the restoration.

Coincidentally, another schoolboy enthusiasm that survived the passage of time reinforced my determination to get her right. Hergé's Tintin books made memorable use of the 1937 Ford, including in King Ottokar's Sceptre and The Secret of the Unicorn. Steven Spielberg's 2011 film The Adventures of Tintin took its automobiles equally seriously: as The New York Times observed, the fleeing coupé was no generic old-timer, but a faithful recreation of a 1937 Ford V8, animated to reflect both the actual car and Hergé's distinctive style. That Hergé liked the car my great-great-grandmother drove is the ornament on the grille, if you will.

Like Spielberg's team, we undertook painstaking research to make the car correct in every detail. Our principal references were The V8 Times and The 1937 Ford Book, both published by the Early Ford V8 Club of America. The archives of the Benson Ford Research Center provided an additional trove of information.

Now that she makes her stately way through the traffic of modern Poona, it is easy to forget what a technological benchmark she was in her day. Faired-in headlights appeared on a Ford for the first time in 1937. Henry Ford himself said that the V8 "makes a sweeter running engine than any lesser number of cylinders". She was economical for her time, returning 21 miles per gallon, yet capable of what Ford triumphantly called "flashing performance".

A 1937 Ford V8 won the 1938 Monte Carlo Rally - I have the contemporary newsreel footage to prove it - and Ford V8s remained formidable rally machinery for years afterwards. Earlier Ford V8s were also the getaway cars of choice for John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, and other notable law-skirting citizens who prized their speed; little wearing a police badge could keep up with them. Their robust steel bodywork offered a measure of protection too, eventually prompting the authorities to use special armour-piercing ammunition against such cars.

An even more economical 60 hp version of the engine was tested in the already fuel-conscious markets of England and France. It attained a dizzyingly frugal 27 miles per gallon and gave rise to the popular Ford mascot, "Scotty the Terrier", and the accompanying motto, "Aye, and thrifty too". Even then, a car that combined power, economy and good looks was prized. Comfort and rugged construction were welcome bonuses.

I came to appreciate that ruggedness during the restoration. The thick sheet metal for which the early V8s were famous - and which protected many a gangster and bootlegger - helped this car survive. We salvaged and repaired as much of the original material as possible. Where something had to be replaced, we used genuine Ford V8 parts.

Remarkably, some of those parts surfaced in the old markets of Delhi and in smaller towns, occasionally still in their original packaging. Others had to be flown in from the United States and England, a time-consuming process that relied heavily on the goodwill of friends and family willing to carry strange objects in their luggage. The restoration took more than three years. Throughout it, my objective remained the complete originality of the body, chassis, engine and interior, down to the gauges, fittings and trim. It was a long and exhausting journey, made possible with the invaluable help of Delhi-based restorer Tutu Dhawan.

In 2018, I took her back to Poona, to the home of my grandmother, Zarine Damry. The Ford had first entered Granny's life in 1937, when she was 18 - one year before she married my grandfather, Purviz Nadirshah Damry. One of her earliest memories of the car was travelling down Marine Drive in Bombay with her grandmother. Bringing the car home to her, more than eight decades later, completed a circle that had begun long before I was born. For the last five years of her life, her grandmother's car was once again part of her home. The Ford remains in Poona, where she is kept and driven today.

In 2024, the Ford was awarded First Runner-Up in the Pre-War American class at The Oberoi Concours d'Elegance. The recognition was deeply gratifying, but the car's greatest value remains something no concours judge could measure: five generations of one family have known, loved, and driven her.

Today, in Poona, when I sit behind the wheel with the top down, enjoying the early winter sunshine and the stares and good-natured honking of passing motorists, the years of research and restoration feel entirely worthwhile. I am driving the same car that my great-great-grandmother collected on 5 October 1937 and drove along Bombay's Marine Drive to her home in Colaba. The restoration preserved a remarkable automobile; her return to Poona restored something even more precious - the car's place at the heart of our family.