Photo

NEW DELHI — After more than 30 years of production, Maruti Suzuki, one of the biggest car manufacturers in India, said late last week that it would no longer make its iconic model, the Maruti 800. After selling almost 3 million worldwide, declining sales and stricter emissions standards have convinced the company’s owners, nostalgic themselves, to let go.

The brakes were put on the 800’s production three years ago, but as it goes with the 800’s brakes, it has taken time to finally come to a full stop. Indian newspapers called it the end of a “glorious saga,” and those of us who have had the privilege of owning one of these humble hatchbacks feel the wistful pangs of an era passing.

My 800, a 1997 model, which I’ve had for a year now, is the quintessential 800: no air conditioning, no power steering or windows, no side-view mirrors, no hubcaps, no armrest. No frills. Designed by Suzuki in Japan for that country’s narrow lanes, it adapted perfectly to India’s tight spaces, and not having a side-view mirror on the passenger side just meant one fewer part that would inevitably have to be replaced when someone knocked it off while squeezing by.

But the car is so much more than an exalted go-kart, or a “moving matchbox,” as I’ve heard some call it. It is the car in which a generation of Indians grew up and found their middle-class sensibilities.

These days, being middle class might be synonymous with eating American fast food at a temperature-controlled mall, but in the 1990s, before Western imports deluged Indian cities with a disturbing commercial sameness, learning how to drive in an Indian-made 800 made the statement, sheathed in unostentatious pride.

At least four members of the family who used to own my 800 learned to drive in it, and their travails proved its endearing indestructibility. The car has been totaled three times, once when it was driven into a huge hole in the road where workers were laying cables. The car was banged up, but six men easily dragged it out of the hole and repairmen simply thwacked it back into shape.

Later, members of the family drove the car nearly 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) from Delhi to Mumbai, planning to sell the car there and to party with its proceeds. Upon reaching their destination, they couldn’t bear to part ways with it.

When the car went on the market in 1983, it cost 50,000 rupees, about $800 in today’s dollars. Nowadays, my 800 is worth more in scrap metal – a local dealer quoted about 5,000 rupees, or about $80 – than it would be in resale value.

Nevertheless, it leaves point A and reaches point B day after day, with only a “tchk tchk” here and a “glug glug” there to let me know it is no spring chicken anymore and that I should be gentle.

Over the years, my car has taken its fair share of dents, but its uncomplicated resilience is its most winsome quality. Every mechanic carries spare 800 parts, and each nozzle or valve costs virtually nothing.

Nowadays, Delhi’s roads are choked with big, foreign gas-guzzlers that glide and glisten. It’s a dog-eat-dog Delhi, and nowhere more so than on the roads, with each person in their menacing, metal missile.

But the 800s that stick around will be portals to a simpler time, when drivers, without A/C in the heat of summer, might just roll down their windows and sing a song, forgetting about the sweat dripping down their back.

Now seems better than ever to say it: I’m sorry, precious Maruti, that I stuffed seven men into your four-and-a-half seats that one time. It was an emergency. We simply had to go to the convenience store. All seven of us.