It was in year 1998 when we bought our first car. A pre-owned 1989 model Fiat Premier Padmini for Rs. 40,000 (Quite a lot of money considering those days). I was in 3rd standard. You wouldn't imagine the excitement of an 8-year-old to see a car parked right outside the house - our own car.
Though my dad always had (still has) a government car (A Maruti Gypsy, Ambassador, Tata Sumo and Tata Safari(current)) at his disposal for office work, it was always a wish to own a car of our own for family trips. And those days’ family trip altogether meant visiting your relatives/grandparents in summer holidays.
Our Premier Padmini was an A/C model but its AC didn’t work as its compressor was not functional neither it had refrigerant. I used to gaze inside the car, its gearbox attached to the steering wheel. Even thinking of installing an audio system into it was a luxury! We kept it hardly for 6 months. In total, we did 3-4 trips to our relatives place in that car and it always used to break down in the middle of the road.
The first time we took it to my grandparent’s place, its clutch plate gave up and car refused to move an inch further. A local mechanic repaired the car for Rs. 2000 and it was the first time I heard about 'Clutch Plates' and how 'Burnt Clutch Plates' can render a car unusable.
The second time we again took it to my grandparent’s place, its Dynamo (As the mechanic told), actually the alternator gave up refusing to charge the battery and the car stopped in the middle of the highway. Repaired it for some 1500 rupees if I remember correctly.
The third time we took it to one of our relative’s place to Gurgaon from Delhi, and the gear lever attached to the steering column broke up and my father literally had the gear lever in his hands out of the steering column wondering how on earth to change the gear or bring the car to halt. It's gear box component connecting gear lever to box broke up. Costed us Around 3000 to get the car back in shape.
The fourth time we again took it for Delhi darshan trip, and the car engine got seized! That was the first time in 1998 I got to know the concept of engine oil and how our car's engine got seized apparently due to leaked engine oil and we were driving our car with no engine oil in it!
So after these 3-4 long trips’,
we decided to sell it off this car. The repair expenditure for repairing a seized engine was around 15 thousands IIRC. Since the original seller was known to my dad, we somehow were able to sell back the car to same guy for same amount of money!
In between I remember, how I along with my siblings used to push the car for starting it as its battery hardly hold up any charge and the alternator hardly charged the battery at the first place. It was fun to be honest. One more incident I will always remember; my dad was getting the tyre pressure checked of Premier Padmini, I went on the front seat and removed the parking hand brake without knowing if it is a break! Since the car was on slope merging into the main road, it started moving forward with an 8-year-old kid sitting in the front seat, my dad outside the car and my mom at the back seat. Somehow my dad forced stop the car using his hands along with the help of air pressure checker guy! Imagine the scenario!
I got to know about so many things about the car from our Premier Padmini.
But the not so good experience with our first 'Used' car, my parents made a resolution to not to buy a second hand car again. After selling the car in Dec 1998, we bought our first new car, a Maruti 800 std in 2001 after cancelling the booking of Maruti Alto in 2000.
In year 2007, came the WagonR, a much modern and reliable car still doing the duty for us, I learnt my driving in this car, I learnt it on my own without any instructions from my dad. With WagonR, I became the in-charge of maintaining the car, polishing//waxing it every month and so on.
In 2010, came the all new Honda City 3rd gen, an exceptional car still ruling the roads. A humble i10 came up in 2011 to fill up the remaining space in the garage.
Let's see which one joins the family in upcoming times.
Ah! That Nostalgic Feeling and Memories all around at the time of writing this text