A
GAMBLE WORTH
TAKING AND AN EXPERIMENT
GONE RIGHT
Joseph
Campbell once said, “Passion will move men beyond themselves,
beyond their shortcomings, beyond their failures” and this very
passion has
helped Dilip
Chhabria and Shahid Haq reach
the pinnacle and make a mark in not
just the Indian automotive industry,
but beyond as well.
Dilip
Chhhabria, founder of DC Designs Private Limited,
is a prestigious name in the automotive industry and is the best
visible automotive designer that India has yielded till date.
Chhabria was a commerce graduate who was intrigued by an
advertisement in the newspaper that read- “Do you want to be a car
designer?” and decided to apply to the Art Center College of Design
where he majored in transportation design. Chhabria, as a child had
doodled cars on every surface at his house and this was the probably
the best means that Chhabria could have culminated his childhood
hobby and love for cars into a successful career.
Shahid
Haq, the CEO and Design Chief at Motormind Automotive Designs, was
born in Kerala and brought up in Bengaluru. Haq after attaining his
degree in M.Sc. Automotive Engineering felt incomplete and lacking
something, which propelled him to pursue higher studies from Coventry
School of Art and Design, United Kingdom, which satisfied him that he
is now equipped with a complete package of knowledge to design with
functionality. Haq has had an ardent passion for cars since a very
young age and with time, he realized that styling them attracted his
interest more than anything else and that’s when he founded the
values and ground on which his company is largely based today.
There’s
a difference between the timelines of both,
yet the achievements and progress are comparable to a certain extent.
DC
Designs was founded in 1993
and
initially produced body kits for only Indian cars and designed
motorcycles as well. DC got its biggest break and made its first mark
on
the
world map in 2003, when they were approached by Aston Martin to make
the show car that previewed the British manufacturer’s V8 Vantage
sports car. After a lot of hard work, the prototype was completed and
displayed in the Detroit International Motor Show and was eventually
launched in 2005. 2010 saw DC make yet another mark by starting the
DYPDC Center for Automotive Research and Studies in Pune with the
D.Y. Patil group, which is an automotive design institute that ranks
amongst the top institutes of its kind in India.
In
2015, his long list of achievements reached
new
heights when DC launched the Avanti,
which is considered India’s first sports car, on the Indian
roads. The seeds for DC Avanti were sown in the 2008 Auto Expo at
Delhi,
after which through effective groundwork, studies and research about
the feasibility and market, a drawing board version of the envisioned
sports car was achieved. The
first pre- production was showcased at the 2014 Auto Expo as the
final version of the original 2012 concept and after clearing all the
Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) tests, it finally hit
the roads in 2015. With a cost price of 35.93 lakhs and an
aerodynamically sound design,
the
DC Avanti was designed keeping in mind the youth.
Motormind
Automotive Designs is Haq’s brainchild
that
took off in 2010. It specializes in automotive styling kits, body and
paint, car foil, customization, concept designing & 3-D modeling,
design consultancy and prototyping. It’s
more than a decade and a half younger to DC.
What
makes the
company
and Shahid Haq worth knowing, is the fact that India’s very first
roadster- Hyperion1-
took birth in the Motormind garage, through Haq’s years of
perseverance, passion and dedicated labor.
Haq
feels that the emotions of his creation, reflect a lot of intangible
aspects of himself and brings out a part of himself that isn't
evident.
“Hyperion1
was my attempt at showcasing skill set and abilities, in a cost-
effective manner and making people realize that one can attain world-
class design in this country too. Also, beautiful things don’t have
to be costly.”, says Shahid, speaking of his creation.
Hyperion1
is an entirely hand-crafted prototype is built by a team of 5 to 6
people with home- grown resources and Haq’s personal savings. The
effective duration of building the car was just one year. Haq’s
work
is aimed at contributing substantially to the automotive industry of
India, which, according to him, lacks taste.
Hyperion1
was
displayed in the Delhi Auto Expo, 2016 where it garnered tremendous
admiration and the fact that this is an entirely Indian production
left the audience awestruck.
Both DC Avanti and
Hyperion1 are have made a mark in the automotive industry, with DC’s
presence well established in India as well as abroad (59 Avantis sold
in India and 1 in London as of 2015),
while
the young
Hyperion1,
which
has received critical acclamation and working on the feedback and the
procurement of the investors, will be starting with the production by
early 2018. It plans to produce 10- 15
track cars (not road legal) and sell it on invitation and then
further expand the production base and achieve the tag of a “car
manufacturing company”.
Stories
like these, especially the ones that end up with people becoming
prominent figures in automobile industry, are hardly found in a
country such as ours. The amount of hard-work that both Haq and
Chhabria have put in to reach where they are, is commendable, but the
contributions that they have made to the industry are just as
meritorious. And as the country looks forward to a brighter future in
the automobile industry, Haq and Chhabria are the pioneers.
