It used to be the custom when we were young that children would seek the blessings of elders at home when going to school to take exams.  On one such day when we – my cousins and I – had finished doing our round of pranams and were about to get into the car, my grandfather asked us to genuflect to the car’s tyres since it was a family elder as well.  We immediately touched the tyres and our foreheads unhesitatingly as marks of respect; to this day I do not know whether we were being had!

But the reason for our unquestioning compliance with what might have been considered a strange instruction in any other circumstance was that the 1948 Rover 75 was for all practical purposes an elderly and revered figure to us.  We were under strict orders never to play hide and seek in the garage which the Rover occupied, and getting into it to pretend-drive by rotating the steering wheel or operating the dashboard switches as we did with all other family cars, was out of the question.  Not all adults who could were allowed to drive it either.

To some in our family it might well have seemed liked the family deity on account of its quasi-religious status. It was unfailingly the groom’s or the bridal car for all those of our family who got married and has always been used on other auspicious occasions such as bringing new-borns home.  It is a wonder that a puja has yet not been held in its honour!

Which are all entirely consistent with the Rover’s elevated status as the first car of our family, and even more, the care and affection lavished upon it first by my grandfather and then my father. Amid much that has changed over the fifty odd years since our school going days, that tradition has continued in our family with the Rover being as well looked after presently as it was all those years ago. Five generations of our family have used it up until now, and I hope more will in the course of time!

My grandfather, who had purchased the car, was a conservative, affluent gentleman who looked for quality in the very few things he bought and was not given to advertising his wealth – which happened to be exactly the same attributes of the Rover marquee of that time.  When he bought the Rover in 1948 for Fourteen Thousand odd rupees, he could have paid just a little more for the more upmarket and exotic Lancia, but it was Rover’s reputation for fine engineering, great comfort and understated styling that appealed to him than the much more flamboyant alternative.  He would have had no difficulty at all in being characterised as the owner of what was then called a poor man’s Rolls Royce!

This particular model, the P3, is the least produced of all Rovers since it was manufactured during the transitional period just after the Second World War.  That is the reason for which in looks it is virtually identical to its pre-war predecessor, the P2, with leather and wood interior, running boards, domed headlights, flared mudguards and a majestic vertical grille.  But under the hood and elsewhere it was a very different car with a new engine that delivered much better performance as well as a new independent front suspension, a first from Rover. It was available in two versions – the six cylinder Rover 75 that we have, and the other a four cylinder Rover 60 with the latter’s engine, gearbox and other mechanicals going into the first ever Land Rover that was launched shortly after the P3 in 1948.

The comfort and durability of these innovations can still be felt, nearly seventy five years since the birth of the P3. It doesn’t as much drive as it glides – a Gujrati gentleman of ample proportions observed in the fifties that its ride was so smooth that even when going over rough roads ‘pet ku pani hiltha nathi’ (the water in my stomach doesn’t move). Not much has had to be replaced in our car either except perishables like brake pads and rubber bushes and even then, the engine and the gear mountings have recently been changed after seven and half decades of service!
 
What did change consistently, although once in about a decade or so, was the Rover’s colour.  I have seen it at different times in two shades of green, royal ivory, powder blue, imperial maroon, dove grey and navy blue, the last three shades being of my own choice. Just now, it is being painted in black as it was at first when it was shipped to Dewar’s garage – the Rover has come full circle.  The only difference this time is that the paint is being applied in a heat chamber in the hope that will last longer than it has on previous occasions.

The Rover has, as expected, travelled a whole lot – its odometer currently shows 84,000 odd miles and that is after it has turned over once which means that it has travelled approximately 1,84,000 miles but that is not something that one can make out by looking at it. Not just because it has been well cared for as long as one can remember but also due to most of the metal used in its body being aluminium that does not rust. Legend has it that Rover engineers ended up designing such a heavy gearbox which could take on virtually anything that they were frantic to reduce the car’s weight by some means. They finally accomplished by replacing iron with aluminium for most body panels - talk about interesting side benefits!

It finds favour with car connoisseurs all of whom marvel at the degree of originality with which the car has been preserved down to the tool tray that came with it, and of course its superb performance. Back when the Statesman Vintage Car Rally was a competently judged affair, it used to participate regularly and win several prizes including, once, The Statesman Trophy for being the best Classic Car.

My father was a car buff who frequently bought, used and then sold several cars for which we were used to a running parade, as it were, that included among others, a Ford Pilot, a Vauxhall Victor, an Austin Westminster, one of the earliest Land Rovers, and a Landmaster woody station wagon.  But never once did he even contemplate selling the Rover. He taught us how to use the car gently by, for example, not using one’s fingers, but the soft parts of the palm to sound the horn so that the spring would not be damaged. It was as if cars, like men, could come and go, but the Rover, like its near-namesake the river, would go on forever!