The Nizam's Standard Coventry: Nizam Mahbub Ali of Hyderabad was one of the early royal patrons

BACK OF THE BOOK

It's a rare coffee table book that arouses the need for a magnifying glass. This one, with some 485 images of royal grandeur, old documents and even ads, does just that-even if you're not a great one for the finer differences between a steam-powered 'horseless carriage' and a petrol-combustion motor car. Evidently, it's the second noun in the title that Sharada Dwivedi, an expert on Indian royalty, and Manvendra Singh Barwani, a vintage car restorer, are hoping to hook readers by.

They succeed. With automobiles taking over from those enormously bedecked elephants of yore (as generators-in-chief of awe in the adulatory hordes), and from those heavily bejeweled palanquins (as conveyers of sequestered feminine grace), how else could it be?

The Automobiles Of The Maharajas By Sharada Dwivedi And Manvendra Singh Barwani Eminence Designs Price: Rs 3,000 PP: 324

The motor car made its first passage to India, however, as a company vehicle for an Englishman called Forster working at Greaves Cotton & Co, in 1898. Jamsetji Tata and Ranjitsinhji were the earliest Indian adopters of the resplendent new technology.

Indian Royalty-the dozens of Princely States slotted by the British Crown by the count of their respective 'gun salutes'-grew enamoured of it only after the 1905-06 visit to India by Prince George, for which Argyll Motors shipped several of its cars to the subcontinent. By 1911, for the same guy's Coronation Durbar in Delhi as India's Emperor, the Empire had to deploy a fleet of Rolls-Royces to project the glory worthy of a man boasting divine investment. This luxury brand's eagle mascot had already come to stand for "the superlative" by then, you see-ever since Maharaja Madhavrao Scindia of Gwalior brought in the first, a Silver Ghost, in 1908, and the Maharaja of Nabha had his officially named 'Taj Mahal'. By 1947, India's streets were haunted by some 800 proud Rolls-Royces.

A Turner Miesse steam car: A version of the once-well-known Belgian 'Miesse' steam car, the car wowed onlookers in more ways than one

Maharaja of Bikaner's Rolls-Royce Phantom II: Maharaja Ganga Singh takes the salute at his princely state's Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1937

A De Dion from the stables of the royal family of Cooch Behar: Princes Rajendra Narayan and Jitendra Narayan in their De Dion in 1902-04

Don't miss the royal anecdotes that punctuate the text. The traffic jams caused by the Nizam of Hyderabad, with swarms of poor compensation seekers hoping to have aged relatives run over by his car.

The trauma caused to poor old bullocks, hard-pressed to adapt their notions of traffic negotiation to the motor age. "The buffalo waits until he sees which side you're going to take, and then calmly takes the same," records an English diarist accompanying Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad of Baroda on a 'car tour' to Khandala.

And, of course, the battle to have women accorded the privilege of travelling in open-top convertibles. It took an emancipated Gayatri Devi of Cooch Behar marrying Maharaja Jai Man Singh of Jaipur to have the Rajputana states cast off the oppressive old 'purdah'.

The first to develop a fetish for fast cars-not that torque, balanced handling, safety and so on were selling points in those benighted times-was Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala, whose acquisition of a '12-zeppelin-engine' Maybach in 1935 set tongues wagging.

The book, ironically, is sponsored by Hyundai, which hit the Indian tarmac with the Santro-a favourite of Doors-raving 'roadhouse' yuppies-a whole century after the first automobile rolled its rubber here. It has been one helluva century, really. It's 2004 now, and the Prime Minister's deputy has finally called for a 'people's car': (priced under Rs 1 lakh). It'll still be a box on four wheels, though. Plus ca change...