Beetles set to rock Bangalore

Beetles set to rock Bangalore
By Bala Chauhan, DH News Service, Bangalore:
Love Bugs on the road on a bright Sunday morning! A great opportunity for shutterbugs and Bug lovers alike to ogle at 17 beauties that will strut their stuff while escorting the new hunk- the Volkswagen Passat, as it were.

Members of the Bangalore Beetle Club, 17 in all, will flaunt their German seductresses in a rally to be flagged off by Andreas Prinz, Managing Director, Volkswagen Group, and Gurjit Singh, MD, PCH Group, at 11 am in Hotel Royal Orchid on Airport Road. PCH is into automobile retailing with Honda, Volkswagen and Porsche. Prinz is visiting the City to launch their showroom Elite Motors on Hosur Road, on Monday.

Coming back to the rally, the Beetles will roll out on the streets from Airport Road to Indiranagar, Garuda Mall and back to the venue, with the Passat in between, bringing back to mind the era now and then and the oft-told stories of love, for one of world’s most recognised cars — the old Volkswagen Beetle.

“The Bangalore Beetle Club is a bunch of passionate people, madly in love with the Bug. These are all old Beetles, but very well looked after. They met us after we advertised in the newspapers about our showroom and the Passat and that’s how the idea of the rally came around. They were also happy that they would easily be able to get the spare parts of their Beetles now,” said Singh. Co-founders of the club Dr M V Shamsundar, a surgeon, and Narendra Raj of an optical networking group, said it was the love for Beetles that helped them find each other and the other 15 members.

Bug language
“I bought my Super Beetle, a 1973 model, 20 years ago because my wife simply loved it. We take it out rarely, on Sundays, for a small trip. Whenever we meet another Beetle on the road, we blink the lights, our sign of bonhomie, like the Merc owners do. We wanted to form a Beetles group in the City but it was only last year, after Narendra returned from the US and restored his Beetle that the club formalised,” said Dr Shamsundar.

The club has around 17 members, all by virtue of being Beetle owners. “The day a member sells his Beetle, he or she is deemed to have resigned from the club. We meet once in a fortnight in our Beetles, with our families, have a small get-together and talk about the beauties before packing off,” said the doctor.

Of beetlenuts
His wife Chitra has named him Beetlenut because he is nuts about it, she said.

“We bought the car because it’s one of the most recognised cars in the world. From a child to an elderly person, everyone has a second and third look of the car and people take out their cameras to shoot it. Also, Germans are very quality-conscious people. Our Super Beetle is the last of its kind,” she said.

Narendra bought his Beetle to fulfil his childhood passion.

“As a child I was not bothered about my clothes but I needed a Beetle car toy and it’s only after my mother bought it that I was pacified,” he said.

The youngest member of the club is 22-year-old Pradeep and the eldest is 75-year-old Air Commodore (Retd) Chandrashekhar.