Chevrolet is not new to India – tracing Chevrolet in our sub continent  
     
 

Maharajas, freedom fighters and the common man – the Chevrolet has ferried them all. The bowtie has been an integral part of India’s automotive landscape from the early twenties till today.

Chevrolet came to India in 1928. An office was set up in Bombay with an assembly plant constructed in Sewree. General Motors (GM), Chevrolet’s parent company, was the first automobile company to open an assembly plant in India.
 
     
 

  Production started in 1928 with the National Series AB Touring. The AB series came with Chevrolet’s well proven and reliable 171 cubic inches, 24.7hp four-cylinder engine. It featured Chevrolet’s first four-wheel mechanical brakes and wooden wheels. In the first year of production, 13,903 GM cars and trucks were built at Sewree, including products from other GM brands.
 
     
 

The Chevrolet brand quickly proved trustworthy and dependable. As a result, a large amount of Chevrolets were imported between 1918 and 1928. The Chevrolets imported during these years mainly consisted of small four-cylinder Tourers, because they delivered the most impressive fuel economy and were simple to run. Even the Nawab of Hyderabad – considered the richest man in the world at the time – used Chevrolet Tourers as official cars.
 
     
 

In 1930, the Indian market became even more competitive as Ford introduced the popular Model A, whose all-steel body made it a great success. Chevrolet replied with a revolutionary six-cylinder engine that developed 46 horsepower. And it was this very car that gave Chevrolet its highest sales in India in 1931.

Sadly, the years 1952-53 marked the end of an era for the Indian automobile industry. The ‘socialist’ Government forced General Motors India to shut shop, along with other foreign car companies.

  
     
  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
     
  BOLLYWOOD Calling  
     
 

 

In Indian cinema, if you really want to say something from the heart, you must shout it out.
Or sing it aloud, with panache – usually dancing around trees in an exotic location, or going for a spin in a dashing car. And nobody has expressed it better than Bollywood that for a special journey called life - it's got to be a Chevrolet. In transporting its audience through all the Big Moments that life throws up, Bollywood's symbol of choice has almost always been a Chevrolet.

 
     
 

Take this encounter from the iconic 1971 film, Hathi Mere Sathi. Here, the breakdown of the rich heroine's Chevrolet, 1958, produces the right opportunity for the poor hero, Rajesh Khanna, raised with an elephant as his companion, to show that Money and Machine aren't Everything. When elephant-might unites with elephantine resolve, social barriers break down; both the Chevrolet and the romance can't help but move forward. So Chal chal chal mere haathi, O mere sathi!

 
     
 

  Both within the camera frame and outside it, the Chevrolet car came to symbolize status, aura and charisma. Moreover, the theme of life as a special journey is echoed a countless times in film after film; what makes the safar so suhana is the presence always, of a kindred soul, a fellow-traveler, or a humsafar. In the 1967 Jewel Thief, this time it’s the bubbly Tanuja driving a Chevrolet, with Dev Anand on a bullock cart.
 
     
 

A Chevrolet Bel Air 1955, of the Tri-Year series, bobbing along with its animal counterpart does not seem incongruous, when you hear Kishore Kumar’s golden voice sing, Yeh dil na hota bechara, Kadam na hote aavara, Ke khubsurat koi apna humsafar hota. (“I wouldn’t feel abandoned, nor my feet stray from their path, were I to have a beautiful soul-mate on my life’s voyage.)

The most sought-after Chevrolet body styles in Bollywood were the convertibles, the two-door Bel Air, the four-door pillarless Bel Air, and the Bel Air station-wagon, called the Nomad. We also see other Chevrolets in Bollywood such as the Biscayne, 1962, upon which ‘hot’ star, garam Dharam, is caught chilling, on a movie set around 1973. Other instances include the 1948 Chevrolet cab that played a stellar role with Dev Anand in Taxi Driver, released in 1954. In the 1962 China Town, Shammi Kapoor romances Shakila in a Chevrolet convertible. Cut to 2003, the Impala SS was driven by Abhishek Bacchhan in Shararat.