TAIL WIND

These two air-cooled rear-engined cars were born from the same stock, but fulfilled different purposes.

- Kyle Pereira

Siddhartha Khona has been a friend of the magazine for ages. I first met him many years ago, when I had tagged along with the vivacious Srinivas Krishnan – erstwhile editor of this magazine when it had the ‘Business Standard’ prefix to its name – to shoot Siddhartha’s Fiat 500 with an old Vespa. And since then, he’s grown his collection to include two VW Beetles and, wait for it, a proper Karmann Ghia, among others. When we told him that we’d like feature his Super Beetle and the Ghia, he was immediately up for it and after the time and date were locked down, it was decided that I’d head to his place to drive one of the VWs, and he would get behind the wheel of the other.

The day dawned and I got there to find the cars already idling at the side of the road, being warmed up after being roused from their slumber. They made for a pretty sight, the Super Beetle draped in its Sundown Orange paint scheme and the sunlight seemingly bending around the contours of the Trout Blue Karmann Ghia. We set out, and I was driving the Beetle while Siddhartha was driving the Ghia just ahead. I couldn’t get over how composed and comfortable the Beetle felt, despite the potholes that Mumbai’s notorious roads kept throwing at it. The smooth ride quality was all thanks to that ‘Super’ bit that precedes the ‘Beetle’ moniker of this VW, and to see how this avatar of the Bug came about, we need to head back to 1968.