Dog days

It is hot enough for even the dogs to seek some shade. This one finds it inside an auto-rickshaw parked outside the Tiruvottiyur temple. After the hike in petrol prices on Sunday, even the LPG auto-rickshaws would be hard pressed for business.

Dog days for everyone, indeed!

Auto fittings

In the 1870s, Simpson established his coach factory at one end of Mount Road. Years later, in 1916, G.U.Cuddon built the "finest automobile showroom in India" a short distance away. With these two establishments setting the bookends for the automobile trade in Madras, some of the roads branching off Mount Road became the support zone, where parts for any vehicle could be procured. They were truly the supports, because the automobile companies were not interested in supplying to the aftermarket. If a car-owner wanted so much as a washer, he had to make a trip to this maze of streets.

None of those streets were more popular than General Patter's Road. More about the origin of that road's name later (hopefully); it is a stretch of about a kilometre, with little but shops selling every kind of part for every kind of automobile ever made. Yes, there was a cinema there somewhere and the office of a political party has become more visible now, but if you tell someone that you're off to "GP Road", you can be sure they will understand your desire to spruce up your vehicle.

And it is service on the street. The men in the photo are not pushing the car out of the traffic or anything like that. They were installing something - a music system? - inside the car and what better place to do it than the middle of GP Road!

Car care-free

One of the wisest investments I made when living in the USA was to become a member of the Automobile Association - the $60 that I spent for the annual membership more than paid for itself when I had to have my car jumpstarted (twice), when I was locked out of my car and needed help, with all the maps that I picked up and with the discounts at some of the theme parks. I don't think I had so many benefits when I was a member of the Automobile Association of Southern India (AASI) during the mid 1990s - the only one I remember was a discount on the insurance premium.

But I am sure there are quite a few benefits on offer, besides the insurance premium discount (which still continues), for there is no reason otherwise for the AASI to have almost 25,000 active members. Headquartered in Chennai, the AASI has 12 branches, covering all the four southern states. It was the second such association to be formed in India when it was established in 1911. The first, at Calcutta, had started 7 years earlier - difficult to believe that there were enough cars to form an association in 1904!

Though membership is economical enough, there don't seem to be enough people queuing up to enroll - with about 500,000 cars running in Chennai city alone, the 25,000 membership figure seems to be rather miniscule!

Simpson to Nano

There doesn't seem to be any authentic information about how this building came to be called by its present name - Gove Building. The man behind its origins was George Underhill Cuddon, who upon arriving in India in 1891, joined service with Simpson & Co. as an assistant. Quite rapidly, Cuddon grew to become the manager of the business and then on to partner, before becoming the sole proprietor. It was he who set out the plans for this building in 1914 and though he died before it was completed in 1916, his plans were more or less faithfully adhered to. A book about commerce in southern India, published around 1920, describes this building as 'ornate'; in the decades since, it has only appeared to be more so. That book also talks about the building being of 'green and white stone'; most likely that the granite frontage was streaked with green, which has probably been dulled over the years.

At first glance it seems to be a hotch-potch - granite on the ground floor, brick on the first; a square tower with a pyramidal roof at the northern end, but an octagonal (almost circular) one at the southern end. But all of that is deliberate, apparently very much in keeping with Cuddon's vision - which also included 18-foot plate glass windows in front, special door, shutters and sun-blinds imported from England and Italian marble floors.

Also in line with Cuddon's vision, it continued to house one of the best automobile showrooms in the city, that of Simpson's, until 1943, when it changed hands. Thiruvengadasamy Mudaliar acquired it for the showroom of his dealership, VST Motors; through the years, the building has been lovingly and carefully maintained. Even if you are walking in to look at the newest car, you cannot but feel a sense of reverence for the history of this magnificent showroom, which still remains faithful to the vision of George Cuddon!

Gates re-opened

Chennai is home to several automobile companies; firms like those of the Amalgamations Group, the TVS Group, the Hinduja Group and the CK Birla Group had created a rich and diversified eco-system of automobile and auto component manufacturers in and around Chennai. Many of those firms were established long ago and have been part of the Chennai's industrial map for a long while now. A fresh impetus to Chennai's automobile manufacturing prowess came about in the mid 1990s, with the setting up of passenger vehicle units by Ford and Hyundai.

Though Ford was the earlier of the two (I believe so - there is not much separating the two, in any case), it was Hyundai that caught the imagination. The first model that rolled out of the plant at Irungattukottai was a huge success and Hyundai was off, blazing the tracks - they currently have the capacity to roll out about 400,000 vehicles a year, while Ford tops out at about half that.

Over the past few months, workers at the Hyundai plant had been agitating, demanding some concessions from the management; things came to a head towards the end of April, when a strike was called. Thankfully, it has not been allowed to prolong and the factory is back in action today, after an agreeement to this effect was reached on Friday. The picture shows a car, probably with some of the managers, entering the factory on Saturday afternoon - maybe they were getting ready to crank up the lines on Monday morning!