CLASSIC CAR TRACK DAY

At the Madras Motor Race Track (MMRT) near Sriperumbudur

- BOB RUPANI

A track day is an occasion when you push a car beyond what's permitted, or possible, on public roads. It's a day of driving on a racetrack and it's normally done only in extremely high-performance cars.

Not being habituated to doing normal things, instead, we recently celebrated a "Classic Car Track Day in Chennai”. Yes, we took five classic cars to the 3.71km long MMRT race track and spiritedly tackled the twelve turns in some very fine old beauties. But none of this would have been possible without the wholehearted support of Chennai-based car collector Ranjit Pratap, who brought five fantastic cars from his sizeable collection to the track. On a hot and sunny day, Ranjit very kindly let me put in some speedy laps and while sitting comfortably beside me, he spoke enthusiastically about his cars and also their restoration, which is done by his own team.

In the course of this conversation, I realized that Ranjit is one of those rare Indian car collectors who regularly does long drives in his vintage and classic cars and he is as concerned about their mechanicals and roadworthiness, as he is about their originality and appearance. In my books, this makes Ranjit a dyed-in-the-wool collector and all of us at OVERDRIVE doff our hats to his genuine passion for cars.

To Ranjit, “A big thank you for letting me drive your superbly maintained cars, and sorry if I pushed your MG a bit too hard, I just got carried away with the sheer elation of the engaging driving experience. And of course, it's only because you keep your cars in such good shape that I was able to drive them with such confidence and explore their performance capabilities”.

1952 MG-TD