Matador escape
Recently released Bollywood movie, Raees, is about a person with the same title. A typical Bollywood motion picture, the character of Raees is played by popular actor Shahrukh Khan. Bordering on mysterious, and drifting on the wrong side of law to make a quick buck, Raees is a bootlegger. He hails from Gujarat where alcohol is prohibited.
A dry state that Gujarat is, it means a big opportunity for Raees to get rich. The plans of the clever bootlegger are however challenged by a tough cop, ACP Majumdar, played by another popular actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui. With Shahrukh’s character said to draw from the life and times of a criminal from Gujarat, the movie shows Shahrukh’s entry into the bootlegging business at a young age, and under the aegis of a notorious gangster Jairaj. With Sadiq, played by Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, as his aid, Raees smuggles alcohol. He bends the law, and builds a business empire, unknown to the fact that he is getting entangled in a web spun by Majumdar. In a one-off smuggling assignment of Gold, Raees, unknown to him, smuggles RDX explosives. He is tricked by Moosa, played by Narendra jha, who uses explosives to carry out serial blasts in North
India. Upon finding out his role, the cops label Raees the ‘most wanted’ criminal. Majumdar reaches Raees’s home with a heavily armed force with shoot at sight orders. Using Sadiq as a pawn, he tricks Raees into coming home. Raees does, and in a blue-colour Matador. It is the Matador, which helps him to foil Majumdar’s plan.
Introduced as a replacement of the Tempo Viking (launched in 1962), which Force Motors (erstwhile Bajaj Tempo) introduced along side the Hanseat three-wheeler, after the 1973 oil crises, the Matador flaunted rectangular head lamps instead of Viking’s round ones, and a uniquely shaped grille. Both the Hanseat and Viking were built by Bajaj Tempo under license from Vidal & Sohn Tempo-Werke of Germany. Over the Viking’s 1497cc four-cylinder four-stroke petrol engine (sourced from Austin of England) driving the front wheels, the Matador was powered by a four-cylinder, four-stroke, diesel engine with a turbulence chamber.
It too was a front wheel drive design, and developed 44 bhp at 3800 rpm. Credited of introducing vans to Indians along with a similar design by Standard Motors, it is the Matador, which went on to be become very popular in India with businesses and individuals. It sprang numerous versions build over different wheelbases, and in cargo and peoplemover guises. Equipped with a fourspeed ZF gearbox, the Matador was replaced with the Tempo Traveller in the early 80s.