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-   -   Fun & Interesting Trivia on the Indian Car Scene (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/150042-fun-interesting-trivia-indian-car-scene-33.html)

Spent an interesting 20 min with Tiff Needell last week






He is the winner of the 1985 Bangalore Grand Prix held in Kolar. He was part of Vijay Mallya's team.

I will update with the video elsewhere shortly

Voah !!! :Shockked: You met Tiff Needell clap:

Knew he had some sort of racing background, but didn't know about the 1985 Bangalore bit. Interesting trivia.

All I know is of him making cars dance in the old Topgear and later Fifth gear shows.

Here's some trivia I bet most of you don't know (or recollect). The same people who launched Indigo Airlines in India, and a group company of Interglobe, had launched the Koenigsegg Agera in India.



Thread & News Article

Today marks the 110th death anniversary of Kerala Varma Valiya Koyil Thampuran.

Now what makes this an entry in this forum is that his unfortunate death is also considered as India's first recorded death by road accident.

The accident happened on 20th September and Kerala Varma passed away 2 days later due to internal injuries.

Kerala Varma was the prince of Parappanad (in Malabar region) and was also the cousin and brother in law of the famous painter Raja Ravi Varma. A well known poet and translator, he was known as Kerala Kalidasa.

He along with his nephew AR Rajaraja Varma (who was also known as Kerala Panini) were returning from Vaikom Mahadeva Temple. The driver lost control of the car when a stray dog crossed their path and the car fell to a side where Kerala Varma was sitting. Others did not have any injury but he suffered internal injuries. In fact he walked to Rajaraja Varma's home and passed away in 2 days.

Ref: https://keralakaumudi.com/en/news/ne...ecame-casualty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala...Koil_Thampuran

A note of interest (and purely from memory. Hope I have the correct details): This uncle and nephew were involved in long running literary debate about the ending rhyme in poems. Kerala Varma was of the school of thought that believed that a well structured poem should also have matching ending rhymes. Rajaraja Varma was a more modernist and was of the opinion that this was not mandatory. I believe they had long running debates about this writing letters to each other.
Personally for me the end result was that this debate was the subject of a bit boring (but something that I still remember after these many years) lesson in my 6th standard Malayalam text book.

Not sure if this should be in Trivia section or accidents. As I am more of a trivia enthusiast putting this here.

Saw this on the morning papers and the car accident pic shown felt kinda off for me.

Reasons?

1. I remember reading this a couple of years back and disappointed that there were no pics of the accident, before realising that this happened in rural Kerala of 1914. Formal functions maybe, but such a clear pic for an accident that happened in a rural place?

2. In the articles, it was said that the car lost control and toppled onto one side, with the person hitting his chest on the ground and dying of internal bleeding two days later. The vehicle in the picture looked like it had a crash/collision than just toppling over.

3. The accident happened in 1914. Even to my untrained eyes, the car looks like it is from the 1930s or so. Not the tin/brass ones with bicycle thin tyres of the 1910s.

4. The number plate definitely looked odd. Kerala in any era had 2,3,4 alphabets followed by four digits. This one had 5-6 digits with something written in small letters below.

5. The coconut trees and background feels pasted on kinda.

Started digging around.

This is today's newspaper article.



This is from a random YouTube channel, from which the newspaper must have taken.



This is the original pic. And the number plates are from 1920s-40s Massachusetts state, USA.

Very good detective work!

Yes, looks like someone at the newspaper agency decided to google old car accident pics and then added some coconut trees in photoshop to make it look legit. Can’t sensationalise with no picture :D

The Tata Tiago, Tigor and Nexon have been sold with diesel, petrol, CNG as well as EV options. I don’t think too many car models around the globe can boast about having sampled all fuel types at least once in the product life cycle!

Would be interesting if Team-BHP could do a shoot out of all 4 fuel types of one of these cars.

Would be cool to have a Nexon P vs D vs VNG vs BEV shootout.

Not sure the current generation or the previous one, the VW Golf in Europe also had a variety of power trains. Mpfi petrol, GDI turbo petrol, CNG, mild hybrid, strong hybrid, plug in hybrid, diesel and BEV.

Add:
Both pics - the car and all it's broken + hanging parts are exactly the same - whether it is the chain in front, the bumper or the bits and pieces lying near the right rear corner of the car.

Predicting the future in 1969!

Hearing this another interesting juxtaposition that comes to mind is of Romano Artioli—the man best known for reviving Bugatti and bringing the legendary EB110 to life—was also responsible for introducing the Suzuki Alto to Europe!

As RC Bhargava’s book mentioned, Artioli played a key role in making the Alto successful in the European market. Before he became synonymous with Bugatti, he was deeply involved in the automotive distribution business, owning one of the largest Suzuki dealerships in Italy. His efforts helped establish the Alto as a popular kei car alternative in Europe, bringing affordable, fuel-efficient mobility to the masses.