Deborshi Sadhan Bose's Garage in Kolkata Houses Two Rare Classics

A large American tourer from the 1920s 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 the 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 passion. It was religion. To this day, Billy carries a picture of Schumacher in his wallet instead of any picture of divinity or even a family member. I have seen the collection he inherited from his dad, the late Partha 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.

"I think that for Billy, his cars are everything for him and then maybe I feature. Before our marriage he told me that he has nine affairs and then me. I was shocked till I realised his affairs are his cars," said Bose's wife Shinjini. She jokes that Billy is so possessive about them that she too thinks twice before going near them.

Billy is the sixth generation of the 175-year-old ECBose Group of Companies associated with the maritime industry. “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 afficionado. 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.

1917 Ford Model T

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 Chatra Coalfields(then 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 in entirety 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 office executive 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 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 at The Statesman Vintage Car Rally of 1986, Bose’s father driving the Model T and his mother Chandra Bose driving the Buick.

1930 Auburn 6-85 Phaeton

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, even 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 20^th century mansion in south Kolkata that the Bose family lives in, in exchange for a pot of rabri (a sweet dish). And this bizarre story doesn’t stop there. While the entire Auburn had been restored, the only thing missing were 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 took 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. “That too, a day before my ICSE examinations,” remembers Bose. 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 sportscar, a 1946 MG TC Midget (another stylish British sportscar), 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 though the beauties are as valued as his life or his family, 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 Billly 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.