Denizens of the automotive world you never knew existed
Dinner will be served in a short while." 7:30 in the evening and the Boeing 737 is a neon flicker over a placid, blue sea. Sleep, you decide, will be difficult thanks to the yapjack passenger next to you. You've handled the conversation well and talked about the global economy, the Euro, and travel. But the talk has now turned to cars and your co-passenger is puking his knowledge on you. He's talking about Aston Martins, Ferraris, BMWs and other super cars; common knowledge if one has been up-to-date with auto news.
How do you put him in his place, get his hirsute-as-a-tarantula hand off the handrest, and finally, catch up on your sleep?
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Take a deep breath, and tell him that the Lamborghini Murcielago is pronounced m-u-r-t-h-i-e-l-a-g-o and then let the plosives and vowels that constitute Fulgura roll off your wine-stained tongue.
Just when you can sense the neurotransmitters in his grooveless brain flashing panic signals, plunge in the factoid that the Fulgura is a Moroccan supercar, and that you think it's a smart effort from Laraki Design. Though, of course, the rear end could have been a lot better.
The yapjack, with the artichokes knotting his windpipe, is retreating now, his paw is off the handrest and the glare of his own ignorance has blinded him.
Now turn the conversation's handlebars towards motorbikes, and while he has just the same old Harley-Davidsons and Yamaha R1s to offer, tell him, with a smug smile, that you've always had a soft corner for the Ural Cossack 650D. Ex-BMW design, nothing could possibly go wrong with it.
Your co-passenger has just been laid to rest. Deed done, and the encroacher off your lebensraum, you wish the attractive hostess good night and head straight for the land of Nod.
There are various cars and bikes other than the Fulgura in the history of automobiles, the likes of which are known by very few people. Unsung little hatchbacks, plain foreign derivatives, and loony dreams that either fell by the wayside or collapsed under the weight of their own ambition. To try and encapsulate their model runs and still-births into a newspaper article would be highly unfair.
Let Business Standard Motoring then talk about a few contemporary ones that are right now running on roads across the world; names which will probably crop up in the 10th O of Goooooooooogle. And an informed mention of which will put wannabe enthusiasts and automotive name-droppers in their proper places.
Like the Iran Khodro X7. The Shah probably fled the arid country in an S-class or a Rolls Silver Cloud, but Iran has been making cars as long back as the 1960s. The first one was the Paykan, a British Talbot-derived automobile, a practice which soon spawned various derivations under licence from Citroen, General Motors, Ford and Peugeot.
The largest Iranian car manufacturer, the Iran Khodro (known before the Islamic revolution as the Iran National Industrial Corporation), is bigger than MG Rover and twice the size of Malaysia's Proton, and, is these days, busy producing the X7. The National Automobile Production Project, which gave rise to the X7 sedan, took off in 1996 with the Peugeot 405 as a benchmark.
The X7 is equipped with an 1800 CC four-cylinder engine and looks like an Audi, a Proton and a Peugeot depending on the angle it is viewed from. While indigenous tech still lags behind global standards, the Iranian car market is a huge one