HEART, ATTACK!

An engine bay is reinforced in the most time-honoured manner

- Kartik Ware

Imagine this. An elderly car hopped up on an engine transplant being redlined through the first four gears, and well into triple-digit speeds the prop shaft decides it's had enough, enters the cabin by breaking through the floor, and impales the seat to culminate its protest. And all this while, the car becomes a runaway pendulum, and only luck ensures that it comes to rest on the road's left shoulder without any harm done to itself or its occupants. That's exactly what happened to this car a couple of years ago, and instead of turning into a cautionary tale, I was intrigued by it. That was because only moments before the cataclysmic failure, it had comfortably outgunned a brand-new Kia Seltos that did its best to chase the old car. Now you get why this is no normal Premier Padmini/Fiat 1100 D, right?

This transformation is roughly equivalent to your grandmother becoming a cage fighter, and it comes from the mind of my friend, Karan Lokhande, who's usually found running Motomatic R&D in Bangalore where he restores old motorcycles and scooters. The Fiat is the first car he ever bought, shortly after I first met him. Intended as a normal restoration job to make the car a daily driver, I suppose it wasn't long before visions of an engine transplant began to haunt Karan's restless mind. And with the help of some well-meaning friends, he got his hands on a recently rebuilt rally-spec 1.6-litre engine from the old Maruti Suzuki Baleno. With friends like these...