The 800 is dead. Long live the 800!

On Friday Maruti Suzuki India announced that it had stopped the production of the Maruti 800 The Maruti 800 is now officially deadThe Ambassador and the Premier Padmini may have been ubiquitous on Indian roads until 1984 but it was the Maruti 800 that put India on four wheels that year For the next 20 years it was Indiarsquos bestselling car outselling all others by an order of magnitude But it was never the numbers that made the 800 what it was it was always about heartVintage The Ambassador and the Premier Padmini may have been ubiquitous on Indian roads until 1984 but it was the Maruti 800 that put India on four wheels that yearFor a generation of Indians the 800 was their first car for many their only This newspaper in 2000 gave some of its senior employees the M800 I was one of them When I left the organisation in 2003 I bought it at a princely sum of Rs 104 lakh I still have it and I still drive it I donrsquot particularly enjoy driving it mdash its steering requires you to enroll in a gym its brakes are not particularly remarkable and in the name of passenger safety well there is the seat belt It has no storage its airconditioning is primordial at best and in the boot there is hardly space to keep onersquos suitcaseNevertheless there is immense joy in driving the 800 Fourteen years after I first drove it in 2000 there is still a sense of thrill when I enter it and turn on the ignition Besides the 800 is a rarity People look at you as if you were a freak just as the same people would look at a person driving a Lamborghini with awe The emotions in the two cases may be polar opposites but an equal number of audience members is guaranteedThe M800 is an icon because it has stories connected with it At least two generations of men have used the car to impress the woman they like Families have spent some of their most memorable moments in it Children have rolled down the windows and enjoyed the breeze on a long drive outside the city Some of my friends decorated the car during festivals with the same fervour as they would their house And yes if you forgot your key inside you could still open it with something as basic as a ruler or a narrow stick Due to this at one point in time it was also the most stolen carAfter the economy opened up in 1991 and as Indians began to reap the fruits of liberalisation the number of car brands increased Maruti Suzuki alone has 16 other car models and is still Indiarsquos largest car manufacturer Japanese American and European brands invaded and the 800 slowly lost its supremacy on the Indian roads But it never lost its charm My fiveyearold daughter refuses to ride in the Japanese Sedan we own and she loves travelling in the M800 Only because the car has no child lock and she can roll down the windows and watch the world go by Well to each his ownI would be lying if I say that I never thought of selling the M800 It is cumbersome to maintain after 14 years It is tedious to drive Its turning radius is worse than the abovementioned Japanese Sedan Often when I have driven for more than two hours I have had to rest for the next 30 minutes to recover from driving stress But I have never complained Not to my wife not to the car mechanic and never to my daughterMaruti says the carrsquos spare parts will still be available to the Indian public for the next 810 years But we all know it is only a technical detail a legal requirementJust like me there are millions of M800 owners and past owners whose lives have been touched by the car a vehicle that would not have made such an impact if this were any other country But Indians were starved for choice in 1984 Maruti 800 no matter how small it was gave us that choiceDriving it was in a sense more liberating than what we felt after the economy opened up in 1991 44 years after socialist shackles that held us back Therefore the M800 was like a friend It spoke to you it completed your family it alone defined an eraThis country will miss the M800Sachin Kalbag is Executive Editor of MiD DAY He tweets at SachinKalbag