SUPERCAR CLUB
The Super Car Club garage and cafe blends together our two favourite things — cars and coffee
A unique space for enthusiasts to hang out in Mumbai
EVEN BEFORE I STEPPED INSIDE, MY eyes were greeted by the timeless lines of an Audi 100 sedan — you don’t see those everyday! — a Nissan Silvia S15, a 997-gen Porsche 911 Carrera and a BMW X5 M. This is the very same Audi 100 that Ravi Shastri won for bagging the man of the tournament tag at the 1985 World Championship of Cricket, imported by special order of prime minister Rajiv Gandhi who had the import duties waived off. Right next to that sat the Silvia, its intercooler shamelessly peeking through the bumper, that belongs to Gautam Singhania who also happens to own the Super Car Club garage and cafe, a miniDisneyland for car enthusiasts.
“Let’s have a coffee first, before I take you around,” says Kersasp Bastawala who looks at the business side of things here. The entry to the cafe, in isolation, is pretty nondescript. A few tables and chairs set up outside with an umbrella to shade you from Mumbai’s harsh sun and that’s about it. And if you are reading this while sitting outside this very cafe, I urge you to go and take a seat inside. Because, aptly, the first thing you see when you enter is a sim racing rig, free for any of the cafe’s customers to use, with a Playseat F1 seat, a Thrustmaster T300RS with the Ferrari F1 wheel add-on and the T3PA pedal set. If you’re not into the virtual side of racing, I’ll sum that up as a pretty kick-ass setup, but let’s get back to reality.
The cafe is a wonderful place to be, the interiors are tastefully done and the entire place is adorned with cool, car-related touches like the replica Jaguar jutting out of the wall and the clock that looks like BBS’ CH-R rims. It looks like a place put together by car enthusiasts. But perhaps the coolest touch of all are the windows. Not the ones that look out at the parking lot, but the ones that face the garage. You could be sipping your coffee while looking at some of the rarest cars in the country get some TLC. And it isn’t the cluttered, humid garage that you might be picturing. It is clean enough to perform surgeries in, and each booth has a separate toolkit, with the tools arranged neatly enough to satisfy even the worst of your OCD. The best bit is that you don’t need to have your car in the garage to visit the cafe, and the garage isn’t restricted to exotics so it really is accessible to all enthusiasts. “We encourage
THE ENTIRE PLACE IS ADORNED WITH COOL, CAR-RELATED TOUCHES
people to come here and take a look at the cars, take pictures, because we never had an opportunity to be around cars like this when we were kids,” says Kersasp. Unlike other places with high-end cars who shoo away shutterbugs and casual onlookers, the Super Car Club garage and cafe welcomes them. You don’t even need to buy something from the cafe, just stroll in, and they’d be happy to let you take a look around. “When you come, there might even be Mr Singhania’s Senna in here for a check up, or his LaFerrari,” exclaims Kersasp.
In fact, the idea of this place came about thanks to Gautam Singhania’s famously elaborate lineup of cars. He owns everything from a Cadillac Model A from 1903, to the latest supercars and hypercars, and those cars need to be taken care of. Sure, there are specialists around the country but not many that Singhania trusted with his personal cars, especially the vintage ones. So, he made plans
for an in-house garage with state-of-the-art equipment that could service his cars. “Soon, we started getting requests from other people to take a look at their cars,’’ says Kersasp. The result of those requests is the Super Car Club garage and cafe and it is meant to be a one-stop shop for everything you’d need for your car. Want to get it serviced? Pfft... easy! Want to fully restore a vintage Rolls-Royce to its former glory with a bespoke interior? “There is no word known as ‘no’ in this business, if a customer has a request, we do whatever it takes to deliver”. Sadly, we can’t show you pictures of the Rolls-Royce in question, but the team at the garage had to call in craftsmen, who specialise in making sofas, to refurbish the rear bench. The (purple) cloth for the interior was taken from the Raymond factory itself, where it was hand stitched to the car’s exact specifications. And if you want to respray your car, there’s even a paint shop inside!
“And this is just the beginning,” says Kersasp. The ultimate one-stop shop goal will inch closer to completion when construction of the adjacent spaces are complete. These buildings will be turned into facilities like a detailing shop and an aftermarket accessory store. In theory, you could have any requirement for your car, and the Super Car Club garage could be your first and last destination. There will be spares available off the shelf, popular aftermarket accessories like exhausts and air intakes will be available for mainstream cars too and perhaps even plug and play tuning boxes. Kersasp added that they will also be able to order highperformance tyres whenever a customer puts in an request. Kersasp says that they are even considering providing customers access to the ‘drift track’ hidden away at the back. So you could not only soup-up your car, but even test it and hoon it around in a safe space!
The Super Car Club garage and cafe is unlike any other facility of its kind in India. Its main attraction isn’t the cafe, or the garage for that matter. What’s special about the Super Car Club garage and cafe is the aura of automotive passion around it. It doesn’t matter if you drive something with three cylinders or twelve; or whether you want to restore a barn find or simply get your car’s tyre pressures checked. It doesn’t even matter if you like coffee or not. If you have even a tiny inkling of attraction toward cars (and Thane doesn’t seem too far away), I urge you to check out this place. You may even end up wanting to get something done to your own car! ⌧
THE SUPER CAR CLUB GARAGE AND CAFE IS UNLIKE ANY OTHER FACILITY