Celebrating the best of the Indian automotive industry was the main flavor as we commemorated our 3rd anniversary with the 3rd edition of our coveted TopGear Awards.
The night was made even more magical as many top guns of the Indian automotive industry graced us with their humble presence. Adding the spice to the night was Dulquer Salmaan, a superstar but first, a true-blood petrolhead, so it only made sense to hand over a token of love and respect to him by awarding ‘Petrolhead Actor of the year’. But before the Awards Gala Night, our chief Ed. Ramesh Somani got behind the wheel of an Audi RS e-tron GT along with Dulquer Salmaan at the Dubai Autodrome. Here’s a snippet of the zealous conversation all about cars.
RS : All right DQ we all know you're a mad petrol-head. Now first, how did this all start? How was this interest triggered?
DQ : I think from the time I was born, my dad and my mama (my mom's brother) were both strong influences upon me. My uncle is a pretty artistic person as he used to sketch cars, planes and he even had other interests including like Wildlife photography. So between all that, I feel I just kept gravitating towards cars. I think all of us petrol-heads are born like that. In fact I remember my early photos of childhood standing on the seat of the car and holding the steering wheel. My mom would tell me that in childhood if I was unsettled, they would put me inside the car and then feed me because I'll be settled there and I'd be happy.
RS : But tell me something, what's your CARography like? You know there's filmography, now we talk about CARography, it's a new term by the way!
DQ : The first car I probably drove was a Maruti 800. I wanted to learn when I was like eight -nine years old itself. My father would just put me on his lap so I could steer there at a young age and then eventually I started coaxing my father's driver and I’d go like “Anna please teach me how this works”. I'd sit as a co-driver and I'd slowly start shifting gears for him, so he'll clutch and pedal and that's how I figured out those gears.
RS : What's the first exotic car you bought?
DQ : Amazingly enough when I was living in Dubai, I had an E63 M6 with a V10 slapped in it. I was working with a construction company. And later in consulting and advertising. I used to think that there's no chance for me to get into acting and I didn't think I'd make it after a year exactly. I thought why should I embarrass my dad, of what the name he has made for himself all these years in the industry. So I was dabbling in lots of other things and so at the time I even tried to start a car trading portal, but I couldn't kick start that one because at that time I didn't have the funds and I never wanted to ask my dad for it. It was so funny, like we would do what dealerships today are doing, you know, photographing their cars and posting them online. At the time my idea was to buy a whole bunch of digital cameras, give them to my sales team and we would go to the dealerships offering them to take pictures and put it on our website with all details. But I don't know for what reason people didn't want to do that, and today you see everybody doing it.
RS : Have you ever taken your legendary father on a drive, drifting, spinning around, all those things? Is he also like a car enthusiast?
DQ : I wonder if he knows what I'm capable of. In his recent film you can see him drifting a Mustang. I think I first learned about a handbrake turn because of Karun and Vickey Chandok in the rally cars they were prepping. I remember telling this to my dad and he tried it in a film. So he loves to kind of pick up from youngsters.
RS : We are in this Audi e-tron GT, we drove it on the track you experienced the performance. What do you feel personally about the future of automobiles ?
DQ : The thing is you know we've been seeing kind of small strides in electric vehicles for a long time now, and we know that the tech has been there since a long time, but I don't think we realize how in today’s time EV’s have actually made it exciting and interesting, unleashing their instant torque and power. Otherwise earlier it was just going from one destination to the other without any excitement or thrill.
RS : Do you own a performance EV?
DQ : I came quite close to considering this actually, the RS e-tron GT, but I feel like I want to wait it out a little bit just for the infrastructure to kind of catch up. It's more interesting in other countries where you know you have superchargers.
Well I do see it coming sometime in the future and I'm sure either this year or next year I'll definitely add an EV to my garage.
RS : What about some of your good driving memories or like the best roads you’ve driven on?
DQ : I think the best driving Road for me was Route 1 in California. I drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles and did the coastal Road from Monterey to San Luis Obispo. It was a Sunday and you could see all the car clubs out, you know the Corvettes the Ferraris all the way to Harleys. It's a very natural thing there on a Sunday and the road is so gorgeous that I ended up doing it twice.
RS : What is your latest acquisition?
DQ : I'm not revealing it just yet but I want to get something special this year. But the thing is, to be honest I fall for these experiences like today. It was so special to me because the way my busy schedule is, I'm always shooting and I hardly get to enjoy the cars as much.
RS : As you said some of the cars you have are really exotic, I mean how’s it like owning these cars and you don't even sell them!
DQ : I find it very difficult to let go of them. Sometimes especially because I collect a lot of used cars and it's so difficult to (A) find them in the market, (B) To convince the guy to sell it or even now if something comes in the open market there's so much interest that I find it very difficult to close the deal. It's like I'll find something and I'm like “hey you know I'm interested can I check it out” by the time I get there, it's gone. It's become a crypto market now. So that's why it's so difficult to sell something because then I feel I can never get it back.
RS : You also do a lot of philanthropy! What kind of things do you do?
DQ : I care about education. And also Medical Assistance. Funding operations and other procedures that people cannot afford. So we do a lot of that in whatever capacity we can. I feel like a lot of people don't have those opportunities. You know we were blessed to go to the best schools and sometimes kids are really talented, really intelligent and they just need that little help, so anything to do with education. I do also want to start something related to sports where you kind of encourage young talent in whatever way, because in India, I feel like we're mostly only hooked to cricket and there are still so many other sporting interests we don't have which need to be explored.
RS : When you go out for these exotic car drives do you take your friends along?
DQ : I try to kind of do like late night drives especially in Kochi you know it's easier late night.
RS : Okay V6, V8, V10 or V12?
DQ : I love them all…flat six engines, any kind of V8.
I've never lived with the V12 as I’ve never owned one, so I don't know what it's like. V10 I think ! That's the most amazing sounding engine.
RS : Do you have any particular driving style of yours?
DQ : I love going sideways, I can drift, I find that more exciting than going at very high speeds. Tailing out for me is the most exciting thing. I remember I first experienced it when I was very young. I think it's an art. My dad had an architect friend who was enthusiastic and he kind of showed me the first handbrake turn so when we came kind of sideways I was like wow what an amazing feeling this is!
RS : What would you do with the last liter of petrol you had?
DQ : I would drive the hell out of it. I love driving my GT3, because I mean I feel like it's manual and it's a high revving naturally aspirated flat six, it just feels like nothing else.
RS : Muscle cars, tuner cars, exotics or classic vintage cars?
DQ : So I love all these things. Muscle cars are very hard to find and I don't like to tune my cars so much because my thinking is so long term that I keep them as close to stock as they age better.
RS : What do you think about the Audi RS e-Tron GT?
DQ : I think it's very cool and I love the design. The performance puts a smile on your face and it does make you laugh. I've always loved RS Audi badges. For me, the RS6 Avant was something which I really wanted for a long time. I love station wagons. So be it M3 touring or the RS wagons I love them all. But with the sort of tail out action I love, the all-wheel drive after a point doesn't excite that much. It tends to understeer. But yea! This one has really impressed me to the core!
