A driving passion

K. Sudhakar of Hyderabad enjoys building cars. Only they are shaped like cricket bats, helmets, burgers and computers. Why? To bring a smile on people's faces, he tells Souvik Chowdhury.

One is shaped like an eggplant. Another like a burger. There's one that looks like a giant camera. You'll also see a cricket ball, tennis ball, football, computer, helmet, a cup and saucer, a shoe ... what are these contraptions?

They are all cars, real cars, real driveable cars. Only they have shapes as mentioned above. And they are all built by K. Sudhakar in Hyderabad.

Sudha Cars, the name of this car builder's shop, is said to be the only handmade wacky car museum in the world.
 
Close to 1,000 people visit this museum every day and the number doubles on weekends.

To date Sudhakar has designed over 200 cars and bikes in various shapes and sizes including a bike shaped like a lipstick. His list of wacky shapes is nearly endless.

When I drop by at Sudha Cars to meet him, Sudhakar is working on a fountain pen bike, a stiletto car, a mobile phone car and a sofa car, all at the same time. Can you really drive these cars, I ask him? Of course, he says, with a pained expression. Why else would he be building them?
 They are not museum pieces certainly.

In fact, every so often, Sudhakar takes off on the streets of Hyderabad in one of his new creations ? and literally causes the city's traffic to come to a halt. Imagine watching an eggplant overtake you?

At his workshop, people line up to stare at the fantastic shapes; the press can't get enough of the wacky genius and when his cars are on the road, maybe at a traffic signal, hordes of kids surround them, touching the things to see if they are real. It moves, so it must be, they say, their eyes turning into saucers as the light turns green and the football takes off.

Ask the traffic cops of Hyderabad and they will tell you this is all very well but controlling the crowds and traffic when one of Sudhakar's cars is purring along is not what thy look forward to. But Sudhakar loves the attention. "Who wouldn't?" he says. "When I see the grins on people's faces, I feel rewarded."

He has been at this unusual passion for two-and-a-half decades. "I do not have any commercial interests in pursuing this,'' he says. He is simply unwilling to part with his creations. "I do not make them with the intention of selling them. But one day I would like to have my own museum in which to display them. It would be nice if people visited it and admired the cars. But that said, he occasionally obliges a person or an organisation by making a car to their specifications.

Some time ago, Castrol, the lubricant company, approached him to design a fuel tanker shaped like a gigantic jug. "I found the idea intriguing. It was quite unlike anything I had created before so I took it up. The Castrol truck is one-of-a kind and is driven around cities during promotional events," he says with pride.
 
Celebrities too have approached him to create zany models for them. A former Indian minister once requested him to do up a Rolls Royce with nifty, woody interiors. "He really loved the car," smiles Sudhakar. "And I loved creating it."

Sudhakar's love for automobiles and passion for creating wacky driveable models has been acknowledged recently by The Guinness Book of World Records. "I am a world-record holder for making the largest tricycle. It took me more than three years to make this three-tonner, 41'7" inches-tall tricycle. It's as tall as a four-storey building," he says.

"Each wheel is about 800 kgs," says the 42-year-old man about his record creation.

Sudhakar's passion for automobiles began as a teenager. "I started off designing bicycles such as single-seaters, multi-seaters, Penny Farthings, Tandems, Made For Each Other; then Velo Cars, Recumbents, Lightfoots, including the smallest bicycle in India, which is about 6 inches high.

"As most other boys of my age, I graduated from bicycles and motorbikes to cars. I designed my first car ? a 1,000-cc beige Dune Buggy with a Herald engine when I was 15. It was a great hit with my friends," he recalls.
 
But if you thought this is all he does, that this is his profession, well, it it not. "It is only a pastime (which takes up a lot of his time)." To earn his bread and butter, he runs his family-owned printing press. "I am grateful to my parents and siblings ? and now, to my wife and daughter for the time and space they have given me to pursue my hobby.''

Sudhakar has had no formal training in building automobiles. "Books and magazines are my sources of information,'' he says. "AutoCAD has made life easier for me but I am self-taught in putting together an automobile."
 
Sudhakar builds much of his cars and bikes out of junk: "I have about 50 junkyards in and around my museum. I spent a small fortune and the better part of my 23 years [in this venture] rummaging junkyards for scrap metal, old motorcycle and moped engines in working condition, and automobile parts that I can refashion. I would not say it is an expensive hobby but it is time-consuming and demands tremendous passion."

Once the metal and parts are sourced, the next step is building the chassis. Once that is done, the engine and suspension are fitted, after which a cardboard dummy of the body of the car/bike is added for a trial run. If it is successful, a replica of the body's dummy is moulded in metal (MS-sheets) and the car is fitted together.
 
"The more challenging it is, the more I seem to enjoy it," he says. Since all of Sudhakar's cars have a low centre of gravity, there is little chance of them toppling over. At 30 km per litre his cars are also very fuel-efficient and if retailed could give many regular cars a run for their money.

Which is his favourite creation? "A miniature prototype of the 1925 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. This 7-foot-long miniature (the original is 21 feet long) is fitted with a 1,100 cc engine and is capable of speeds of up to 80 kmph."
 
One of his latest creations is a cricket bat car which he hoped to present to the Indian cricket team if they lifted the World Cup. They didn't. He wept.
 
The 25-foot long, 3-foot 3 inches wide, three-foot tall car looks like a mega size bat and has a shining wood finish. It also has an 8-foot long handle but now sits forlornly in the museum.

How much wackier will the future be? "I am planning to create the world's first motorised animal park," says Sudhakar. "Initially, the park will have five or six motorised animals. Trial runs are complete and the stage is set to open sometime this year. There will be a turtle, bear, wild boar, a couple of elephants and tigers.

"All the animals will be life-size. A proper skin treatment will be given to ensure they look as close to the real thing. The adult elephant, which is 8-feet tall, will be used to ferry children around the one-acre museum.

This was an idea triggered by my nine-year old daughter Spasthakshara, who suggested it would be fun to go around the museum with friends on elephant-back," says the man beaming.

It was difficult sychronising the walking styles of the various animals, he says. But he is on target and appears optimistic of throwing open the gates of this unusual zoo by the end of this year.

The fact that the project is difficult has only made him pursue his venture with even more zeal. After all, for Sudhakar, challenges are mere bumps on the road to success.