Hindustani Ambassador

Remember these, they are still running around in their thousands, the 1950’s Morris Oxford was built in India after they bought the whole factory when it closed in UK. If you have been in a taxi in India chances are it was an Ambassador. They rattled, bounced all over the place because they had no shockers, the tyres usually had no tread and if you were going more than 3 or 4 miles they would have to stop for petrol.
I once took a suitcase full of carburetor jets for the Ambassador from London to Delhi as the Indian ones were not much use and British made fetched a premium. I got paid $200 for the shipment, luckily I didn’t get asked any awkward question at the border crossing, imaging trying to pass off 500 carburetor jets as spare parts for a diesel bus.

A drive in one from Jammu to Srinagar proved how rough they are with very little in the way of suspension and brakes that struggled on the downhill bits. Still they are everywhere and if you breakdown parts are never far away. The newer models are looking very up market, well for an Ambassador anyway.

For more Overland History visit the Overland Forum

The workhorse of India

http://www.indiaoverland.biz/forum-img/ambass3.jpg

A modern day Ambassador

1 comment to Hindustani Ambassador

  • DARCY WALLER

    My Father gave me his old morris oxford when I got my license, it had a electric petrol pump and i had to get out and wack it with a hammer every 100 or so ks om that it well apart from that it went well and had many succesfull weekend trips away with the boys (on the odd occasion a girl as well) surfing around the south coast of NSW
    Cheers
    Darcy

Leave a Reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>