This collector's story profiles Kolkata-based collector Deborshi “Billy” Bose and the remarkable origins of his family’s vintage car collection, inherited from his father Partho Sadhan Bose. From a Ford Model T rescued from a paddy field in exchange for a water pump to an Auburn tourer obtained for a pot of sweets, each vehicle embodies a slice of Indian motoring and social history.
A large American tourer from the 1920s was acquired in exchange for a pot of sweets and an even older American legend on wheels for a new water pump. Behind nearly every car behind the glass-paned doors of the Bose family garage is a unique story, but the stories of the Auburn and the iconic Ford Model T really do stand out.
I met Deborshi Sadhan Bose, better known as Billy Bose, decades ago when we were both in school at the grounds of Fort William in Kolkata for a vintage and classic car rally sometime in the late 1980s. With a common love for everything cars, friendship with Billy was easy. Over the years, that friendship deepened further. We both loved Michael Schumacher, and we both loved Ferrari, Formula 1 was more than a passion. It was religion.
I have seen the collection he inherited from his dad, the late Partho Sadhan Bose, countless times before, but this is the first time I was sitting across the table and listening to the stories of how the collection came to be.
Bose comes from a family that runs the oldest shipping company in India, the E C Bose Group. “It’s a 175-year-old company, and I am actually the sixth generation in this,” he tells me. “Basically, my father, who was also the honorary consul of Slovakia, had a great love of antiques. Clocks, paintings, shawls, watches, statues, and the biggest of them all were vintage cars.”
Through the 1980s and early 1990s, the late Mr Bose, Billy’s father, was also competing in major motorsports events and was a well-known car aficionado. The young Bose’s own interests also lay in fast cars in the beginning, and he admits that his love for the older, and therefore much slower, cars was an acquired taste.
It was sometime in 1984 or 85 when Bose’s father bought the iconic Ford Model T, sparking off a collection that now stands at nearly a dozen. “He was travelling back from Chhapra in Bihar (now Jharkhand), since we were also into mining at the time. He had stopped for a tea break at a typical roadside dhaba, next to which was a tyre shop. He noticed a wooden wheel there. He immediately realised that a wooden wheel like that would probably have come from a pre-1930s era car. Enquiries led him to the village headman, who told him that indeed there was a car lying around,” Bose says.
What his father had found was the skeleton of a car, lying derelict in the paddy field. What the car was missing entirely was the engine. “He asked about the engine only to be told that the villagers would not be able to give him the engine because they were using it as a water pump to draw water from the well. When he offered to buy them a brand-new water pump, the villagers were skeptical. They told him that many before him had made similar offers and left never to return. So he sat there and sent his assistant, who was travelling with him, and a member of the village to get the best water pump they could find.”
Having finally found a man who would keep his word, the villagers handed the Ford over without any monetary exchange and even organised the truck that would bring it back to Kolkata. It would be another two years before that black 1917 Model T with the brass-framed windscreen and open body, would become a regular feature in Kolkata’s vintage and classic car scene.
The second car to make it to the Bose garage was a Buick. Another gorgeous convertible that was lying ignored in a house close to the Bose ancestral property in Howrah, which is just across the river and where the Boses hail from. “A friend told Dad that there was this vintage car lying behind our old house in Howrah. He left his office and went straight to the house, which turned out to be just behind our house. Basically, a bunch of kids were playing, and the ball they were playing with had rolled into the house. When they went in to retrieve it, they discovered the car,” Bose recalls. Then began the painstaking work of restoration, which in the days before the internet involved lots of letter writing to find out details and information about the cars. The Model T and the Buick were ready to participate in The Statesman Vintage Car Rally of 1986, with Bose’s father driving the Model T and his mother, Chandra Bose, driving the Buick.
The other incredible story is about the acquisition of a 1930 Auburn 6-85 Phaeton all-weather tourer. As before, this car too was lying derelict and forgotten, tucked away in the garage of the well-known Sovabazar Rajbari (the royal house of Sovabazar) of north Kolkata. In the beginning, the proud family refused to part with the car even though it was falling to pieces. It wasn’t dignified enough for an aristocratic family to sell off family heirlooms.
Eventually, they had had enough and decided to give it away to Bose’s father, who had a reputation for not accepting anything for free. So a deal was struck and the car, or what was left of it, was taken away to the sprawling early 20th century mansion in south Kolkata that the Bose family lives in, in exchange for a pot of sweet. And this bizarre story doesn’t stop there.
While the entire Auburn had been restored, the only thing missing was its wheels. No amount of effort was spared, but to no avail. Bose’s father even tried to have them reconstructed, but they weren’t strong enough and wouldn’t take the weight of the car, which was about a tonne, and a half.
“Oddly enough we had a descendant from another branch of the same family as the Sovabazar family working for us. One day he turned up and told my father that they used to have a vintage car in their house once upon a time. The car was no longer there but there were a lot of old spares still lying around,” Bose narrates. “Something struck my father and he dug a little deeper till he realised that the spares belonged to the Auburn. They went instantly to the garage and found a treasure trove of two complete sets of wheels, two steering units, and multiple other items.”
Thereon, the Auburn two a few months to put together, and by 1998, it was ready for Bose to make his own debut as a driver at that year’s Statesman Vintage and Classic Car Rally.
Behind the wheel of the newly restored Auburn. While these two stories really stand out, more cars followed. Somewhere along the way, a very stylish Jaguar sports car, a 1946 MG TC Midget (another stylish British sports car), a grand Pontiac, a 1926 Fiat, a pair of British motorcycles – a Royal Enfield and a Triumph, and even a 1931 Rolls-Royce 20/25HP drove into the Bose garage.
Today, Bose continues to maintain the collection with passion and admits that his passion or expertise is not nearly enough to come close to, let alone match, his late father’s passion and expertise. Be that as it may, but for the likes of Bose and his father, we might never have heard of the Model T that was acquired for a water pump or the Auburn that came home for a pot of sweet.