When luxe hits a speed bump

Owning a luxury car in India is akin to maintaining a white elephant. High-end vehicle owners tell us about the problems they face while keeping the cars up and running in Mumbai

When Dipa Karmakar performed the Produnova, or the vault of death, in the Rio Olympics in August, she held an entire country under her spell. Despite the fact that she missed out on a medal by a whisker, Dipa was showered with awards and accolades when she returned home. Amongst the awards was a BMW X1, given to her by the Hyderabad Badminton Association, and presented by Sachin Tendulkar.

The problem, explained Dipa’s father, Dulal Karmakar, was that there isn’t a service centre for BMW in the state of Tripura, and the condition of roads in her native Agartala are not good enough for the vehicle to be driven on.

Dipa’s predicament is not hers alone. Luxury car owners in and around the metropolitan city of Mumbai too groan when recounting how much of a nightmare maintaining a high-end fleet of cars is.

“It’s quite tough to maintain a luxury car in India,” sighs Gaurav Pareek, a city-based investor, who formerly owned a Porsche Boxster. “You need to think twice before taking the car out. The roads here are so bad. Just last week, my car hit a pothole, and the right suspension started making noises. I had to open it up and have it checked.”

Businessman Damandeip Singh Chadha too believes that the city roads are the bane of every luxury car owner’s lives. “Any car that costs more than '1 crore, or is low slung is affected by our pathetic roads. We don’t have potholes on the roads, we have roads on the potholes. I suffer from slipped disc, and these roads are bad for my health. Even a normal journey that’s seven kilometres long will last anywhere between 35 to 40 minutes. Our infrastructure is so horrible, even our bikers are dying on our roads!”

Jaitegh Singh Chandok, who runs his family business of motor spares and services explains that owners of these cars know they’re in for peculiar problems when it comes to owning luxury cars in India. “There are no complaints about scratches premium cars suffer, because in the back of their minds, they know they’re driving in Mumbai. You even know that you can’t drive you car at the speeds of 140 or 150 km per hour.”

Gaurav chimes in, “A rather weird problem is that if you park your car anywhere in town, or a shady area, people will come and take the logos off your car. If there are any small things like a detachable grille, it will be gone in a matter of seconds. On the other hand, roads here are so small that if there’s a malfunction in your car, you can’t even park it till you get help. There’s no way you can use a regular towing truck, and you need a flatbed truck to haul the car away, which can take hours to get to you. Once my Audi Q7 broke down in such a way that we were forced to stand and redirect the traffic. It was very embarrassing.”

One of the biggest hurdles that the owners of luxury cars have is procuring spare parts for their vehicles. “When you’re abroad, cars will run for lakhs of kilometres with no issues,” says Damandeip. “Here, you need to change suspensions every 35,000 odd kilometres. This happens when you can’t let your cars speed — the brake pad wears off and the suspensions are messed up. The tyres also get torn, and don’t even talk about the rims. Basically, when you buy a car here, you sign up to waste your money.” With most of these luxury cars being automatic drives, the brake pad is the first to wear off, considering how there’s a need to stall the car in traffic every few metres.

“There are a lot of Chinese parts now available in the market that hamper the safety of these luxury cars,” reveals Gaurav. “These parts are not authentic and don’t have a brand. People stick a European-sounding name’s label onto the parts to trick you into believing they’re genuine.

With parts like brake pads available, it’s quite a risky proposition. These are high-powered cars and faulty breaks can be alarming.”

On the other hand, Damandeip says that the fuel required to run these cars can be hard to find, even in Mumbai. “There’s a specific type of fuel that you put in high combustion engine cars. You barely get these at four or five places.”

Gaurav divulges that he recently sold off his Porsche. “I sold it off since I wanted an upgrade. I brought a Mercedes E class for regular use now. On second thoughts, I probably won’t buy a super car, since maintaining it is so difficult. I wish the government would build a race track in Mumbai like the ones in Delhi and Chennai,” he adds.