News

25th Vintage Car Exhibition and Drive in Jaipur: Some fantastic images

31st March 2024, 12:30 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

I spotted some awesome classic cars like the Buick Dynaflow, Chevrolet Impala and Nova SS. I also saw the Packard - world's first air-conditioned car.

BHPian tbppjpr recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

25th Vintage Car Exhibition and Drive 2024, Jaipur: Revisit The Era of The Most Beautiful Cars

A photo and video walkthrough of vintage cars

The vintage car show has been organized regularly at Jaipur by 'The Rajputana Automotive Sports Car Club' in association with the 'Department of Tourism' (Government of Rajasthan).

Despite this popular vintage car show being regularly organized in my hometown, I could never make it to visit any of the previous events in the past. Mostly I missed it because I could not get the schedule information prior to the events.

This year I got the schedule information in much advance so I could plan the visit. I got my cameras ready and reached the venue, Taj Jai Mahal Palace, Jaipur at 9 am on 25th Feb.

The time was perfect since there was hardly any crowd that early in the morning which allowed me enough time to capture some fine details of some of the cars without disturbance. As time passed, the number of visitors started increasing being it Sunday. Later the venue was full of curious and enthusiastic people.

The venue, Taj Jai Mahal Palace, Jaipur:

Video description:

The 4K video (watch time: 8 minutes) starts with a visual story of a participant's vintage car struggling to take off for the group drive. The story is divided into three short parts mixed with the rest of the walkthrough portion which again covers three different sections.

The first section is about the introduction which reveals fine details of a few of the participant vintage cars. Not only the exterior-interiors, but I covered mechanical details (only in the video) of some of the cars as well.
The second section is about the roaring motors from the past. No petrolhead would like to miss the musical notes of those V6, V8, (V12?) motors.
The third section is about witnessing the beautiful cars in motion. Some of the car owners were dressed in some retro-style clothing and some even felt like old film actors driving cars despite not wearing any retro styling clothing or makeup.

More than 60 GB of high-quality 4K 10bit 422 log profile video clips recorded on Lumix S5IIX are tightly edited into this 8-minute short video and composed with handpicked retro style music matching the mood, full credit to the musicians of those tracks. It took a lot of time to edit and re-edit, that's why I am posting it now after more than three weeks from the event.

There are a lot of cars and their details which I could capture only in the still photographs so going through the still photographs is not going to be a repetitive experience.

Prelude:

Jaipur, capital of Rajasthan - the state with a rich heritage. But the heritage is incomplete if we talk only about the architecture and history of different eras. We also talk about the mode of transportation in different eras along with various other elements to call history - the heritage.

Elephant Seat at Jodhpur fort:

Motor cars have been a key mode of transportation since the beginning of the previous century. The technology and designs of the cars kept changing over the period of time.

Today we have reached a threshold of reliability where cars refuse to break down despite all kinds of abuses we throw them in or whatever kind of regular-irregular maintenance schedules we follow. But they miss out on the wide differentiation of design characteristics of those old-timers. They start feeling monotonic and boring at times compared to the classic beauties.

Old walled city area of Jaipur full of monotonic cars:

Design difference between the cars of different generations:

But there was an era when the cars used to be so vastly different compared to others:

Not only in terms of designs but in sizes as well. Notice the proportions and size with such big differences:

Cars in that era used to be colorful. There was no space for the similarity. White, the most common colour in today's cars was a rare sight in those days along with the second most popular color silver which used to be chosen as exclusivity like any other color of that time.

Spotted two vintage cars with different shapes at a fuel bunk on my way to the venue:

I would have liked to cover all the cars (100+) but could manage to capture only a few out of so many who came from various parts of the country because the drive was also scheduled in the morning hours of the second and last day of the event. The rally was flagged off by the deputy chief minister of Rajasthan Diya Kumari who is also a member of the Jaipur Royal family.

Red carpet ready for the march past of the queens of the past:

I wanted to have some words with some of the participants but found a few of them already busy talking with others so did not disturb them, instead concentrated on capturing the beauty of the vintage cars. However, I am willing to record interviews of a few vintage car collectors in future exhibitions.

After observing those vintage cars so closely, I could feel a fraction of how much it takes to maintain them, it's a very demanding job, and one has to be highly dedicated towards this passion.