“The Sonata still turns heads, and it has the stately air I need at this stage in life. ”

“I'll come to the Speed Run if I get to drive one of the cars,” says Anil Dharker, chuckling, when I extend the invitation. He's a real, leather-gloves-and-hot-metal car nut, not something I'd actually expected from a writer this refined.
The gentility is there, sure, in his sedate Hyundai Sonata, his speech and his home, but there's a fascinating passion behind all that — see the little Porsche scale model on the Sonata's bootlid? He has a small but impressive collection of scale models, from this 911 Turbo to a Lotus Esprit, a Murcielago and an E-Type, one of his big favourites. “That's the car I'd really like to own — it was the big thing in the 1960s and ’70s, when I was in England. For now, I have a Sonata, which has been great, too.” The Sonata, he says, is the sort of stately, elegant cruiser he needs at this stage in life.
He doesn't like the look of the new Sonata, saying it looks too generic, too much like all the other luxury cars in the market. "This one still turns heads everywhere it goes, and it's comfortable and nice to be in." He also owns a Daewoo Cielo, which is his everyday runabout; shod with alloys and tubeless Pirellis, this is the car he takes down to the shops.
“I drive myself, so I have to be careful where I park — even parking lots aren't really safe, just a cottage industry for people who can drive.” He hasn't been able to find a truly reliable chauffeur, so he pilots all his cars himself; besides, he doesn't hold truck with the idea of letting someone wait for hours in a hot car while you’re busy.
Of course, the self-drive bit suits him well, for he loves being behind the wheel. He started driving when he was blatantly underage, paying off officials to let him drive his father's Hillman. He also had two uncles in Baroda, one with a sporty Morris, another with an MG, which he drove every time he got a chance. Then, there were long drives through the UK and Europe, in Mini Coopers, camper vans, and over 5,000 kilometres in the USA, borrowing a succession of friends' cars.
This was not always pleasant, because the USA's monotonous Interstates work better than Calmpose, so he occasionally fell asleep at the wheel, and had to get his companions to sing to keep him awake. All this was capped by rides in a Rolls-Royce in the UK (“You couldn't even hear the clock”) and an exhilarating drive in Mumbai in a friend's turbocharged Toyota, which was quite a bomb.
His first personal car was a Premier Padmini, bought off a pal for Rs 17,000, an all-round brilliant deal; the finicky first owner meant the car was in great shape, buying used meant no decade-long waiting period and in a few years, he managed to sell it for Rs 18,000!
He installed seat-belts in the car, influenced by his stint in England, where they take safety very seriously. “I've even written about safety — it's appalling to see how careless people are about safety here. For a few years, I think my Padmini was the only Indian car here with seat-belts!”