Pambassador
Can a Hindustan Ambassador really be reborn as a Peugeot? Yep, and we’ve got the advert to prove it
We recreate the advert by upgrading the Hindustan Ambassador into a Peugeot. With hammers
“I try to fathom how my life has led me to this moment”
Ashish Nar, a teacher of car design by trade, has slipped into the role of acting coach with surprising relish. “No no no. It’s bob, bob, bob… hi there,” he says slapping his hands together, nodding his head and raising his chin in sync with one eyebrow, while fxing me with the laser stare of a seasoned Bollywood director. Rewind an hour and we’re working on the head wobble: “Jack, you’re in love with this car; it’s side to side to side, half smile and open those eyes.” He demonstrates, complete with jazz hands to fnish.
I try to fathom how my life has led me to this particular moment, stood in a dusty car park in Pune, India, surrounded by cameras and slightly disappointed faces, and can’t. So let’s start from the start, where we fnd an acorn of an idea. Early 2017, and Peugeot has just purchased the rights to the Ambassador name from Hindustan in a deal worth around £9m. The Hindustan Ambassador, if you’re not familiar, is the car that got India rolling – based on the Morris Oxford and built between 1948 and 2014, it received various mechanical upgrades over the years, but kept the same delightfully old-fashioned three-box body.
Where once they choked India’s cities, now, just four years after production ceased, Ambassadors are rarer than McDonald’s Szechuan sauce, used only by a handful of nostalgic private owners and government ofcials. I digress. The point is Peugeot’s acquisition sparked a memory, a recollection of elephants and sledgehammers and a stirring Indian soundtrack. You may recall a Peugeot 206 advert frst shown in 2003, where an Indian chap takes a shine to the 206, so he sets about smashing and crushing a Hindustan Ambassador with the help of a large animal, a wall and various tools until it’s an approximation of the 206… at which point he drives around town grinning like a dog with two appendages.
If you haven’t seen it, shame on you. It’s without doubt the summit of car advertising, matched only by Mercedes’ Magic Ride Control chickens and that time Honda fddled around with some cogs. But it’s not perfect, at least in my eyes, because the star car is nothing more than an unpainted, dimpled 206 pulled from the production line. What if, I pondered, you could actually convert an Ambassador into the 206’s modern equivalent, a 208? Specifcally, a 208 GTI?
A few phone calls, several meetings and some top-drawer persuasion – that this defnitely wasn’t just a costly and pointless exercise, it was about the spirit of human endeavour – and I had the green light. All that was left was sourcing a donor Ambassador and fnding somebody, anybody, in India mad enough to take the project on. Enter the automotive design department of Ajeenkya DY Patil University in Pune, who, for some unknown reason, felt confdent it could be done. We sent them photos of the 208 GTI, a handful of genuine 208 GTI components (headlights, grille, wheels, tail-lights, wing mirrors and badges) and braced ourselves for the mayhem about to unfold.
For the next three months, videos and photos arrived in my inbox, updating me on the progress of the build. I leant back in my chair in London, a satisfed smile slapped across my face for having such a marvellous idea and that the whole thing was going so smoothly. Clearly, I’m a fraud – all the back-breaking work, all the long nights bent over a hot welding iron, all the boundless resourcefulness required to force an Ambassasor through a 208-shaped die, were the team in Pune – teachers Ashish Nar and Kushal Jadhav, plus students Parth Dodiya and Sidharth Rath who took on the project as part of their course.
Today, though, that’s about to change. I’m in Pune to personally put the fnishing touches to the project… by which I mean embarrassing myself with a spanner and sticking the badges on. I’m also here to flm a shot-for-shot remake of the 47-second-long advert, starring yours truly and our fnished Ambassador-based Peugeot 208 GTI. Let’s call it the Pambassador for ease and amusement.
Back to the car, because I’m standing in front of it. The covers are about to be whipped of, and most of the university, the majority of whom have lent a hand in some shape or form, has gathered to gauge my
reaction. I’m visibly nervous. It’s hot, sure, but I’m sweating more than is strictly necessary because I have a deep-seated and peculiar fear about all this – that the fnished product will look too good, too polished, too much like a Peugeot 208 GTI. The tarpaulin foats to the foor… a sigh of relief. Don’t get me wrong – what I’m staring at is an extraordinary piece of ad hoc engineering, but there’s also a homespun shabbiness around the edges, just as I’d hoped.
With no mods to the Ambassador chassis, the stance is on the tall side for a hot hatch, and the paint and panel gaps would be unacceptable on a Chinese clone. The interior is a bit of a giveaway, too, being as it is, entirely untouched from the Ambassador, apart from a piece of carpet to plug the chasm that’s opened up between the dash and the new, more steeply raked windscreen. But squint a bit, and that, my friends, is a Peugeot 208 GTI – two-tone Coupe Franche paintjob, the lot. Considering where it started life, I’m fabbergasted… and keen to fnd out how on earth they did it.
You’ll fnd your handy step-by-step guide to converting an Ambassador into a small French hatchback opposite, but here’s a favour: they did it with bloody-minded determination, a boatload of fbre-glass, by enlisting an expert panel beater, endless late fnishes and early starts, more welds than the hull of the Titanic, scant regard for any health and safety protocols and constant ingenuity, creativity and imagination, the likes of which we so often forget about these days when there’s technology to fall back on.
And the most brilliant part of all? Beneath the new frock and lipstick, this is still a functioning car – albeit one powered by a 75bhp, 1.8-litre Isuzu diesel engine that makes an erupting volcano seem refned. Even the lights and indicators are wired up. Although not strictly road-legal, a quick rattle to the nearest town shouldn’t get us in any trouble, so long as we don’t draw any unnecessary attention. Fast forward 10 minutes and I’m wrestling with the unassisted steering in searing 35ºC heat, swerving to avoid dustbin-sized potholes that might snap the rear leaf springs, and trying to execute a fve-point turn without running over a cow or over-revving the engine. Meanwhile, Rowan runs in and out of trafc waving his lens around and generally causing a bit of a scene.
A crowd forms, the engine overheats, we pull over and pop the bonnet and accept that, despite being rear-wheel drive, the Pambassador’s hot-hatchy-ness is defnitely just skin deep. TopGear, doing the vital research so you don’t have to. But enough road testing – there’s an advert to shoot. And if you thought Ashish and his team hit their creative peak during the build, you’ll love what comes next.
First, let’s address the elephant in the room. We don’t have an elephant. We tried, seriously, but fnding a showbiz-savvy six-tonne mammal in India that meets European animal welfare standards is… tricky. Who knew? Instead, we agree on using a JCB for the bonnet-crushing scene. This is not my frst choice. The