Anything but a Box

You can’t go racing in these cars but they sure can attract a crowd.

It is fair to say that the automotive aesthetics that guide K Sudhakar—the proprietor, chief patron and sole contributor to the Sudha Car Museum—would bemuse industrial designers. He has made roadworthy vehicles that resemble a cup and saucer, a cricket ball, a football and a shivling, among other objects. His two decades in the field have resulted in numerous such vehicles, of which 160 are currently on display at the museum in Hyderabad.

“This is only a hobby,” Sudhakar says, clarifying that his real work is at the family’s printing business. He felt the first indescribable pull of machinery over two decades ago, walking past the local roadside repairman on his way to school. Babu Khan distilled years’ worth of knowledge to Sudhakar as they both tinkered and toyed with cars at his workshop. They had nothing in common but their childlike determination to dismantle and reconstruct. “He taught me how to start building a car. It had to begin with visualisation,” Sudhakar says.

His first near-brush with fame came in 1996, when he built the world’s smallest double-decker—a backbreaking 8 ft 8 inch. The people at Guinness Book of World Records got back to say he’d be eligible for a record if they ever created a category for his achievement. (His entry for the largest tricycle—42 ft high, weighing three tonnes—was admitted). In 1997, city police requested him to hold a roadshow for the traffic safety week. He did it with 80 weirdly shaped cars, buses and bicycles. The event was so popular that the police ordered repeats until the show itself became the cause of traffic snarls. Sudhakar believes that over 2 lakh people saw the show.

He guessed that people would pay to view his novelties, and he opened the museum with 70 vehicles on three floors over two acres of land. Today, on a good day, it attracts anywhere between 3,000 and 4,000 visitors who pay Rs 30 for a ticket (half that much for children). His vehicles are used in tourism and amusement parks, and clients who prize the inherent weirdness of these things come to him with requests and a hefty cheques. He estimates that each car costs Rs 1.5 lakh to make. He makes them out of scrap—mild steel—acquired from the 50-odd junkyards around Hyderabad. It costs extra when external talent is required. He usually has three workers helping him create these cars, but right now he has a golf ball car under construction; it has 260–300 hand-crafted dimples. That needs more than three pairs of hands.

His clients now “are all commercial people”, Sudhakar says. But he isn’t really in it for the money. “I reject jobs unless they are interesting for me. Anything modern? I refuse to touch it. But whacky and vintage? Yes. I will do any car I’m excited about. That way, when I start work on it, I don’t lose my enthusiasm for it.” He says that each car takes between two months and a year to build, and that’s only the exterior. “Everything is as per norms. Only the shape is different.” Sudhakar’s vehicles are built around motorcycle engines, and they weigh 150–200 kg. They can be driven comfortably at speeds up to 45 kmph. “But these are meant for road shows and museums,” he says.

Sudhakar and his strange creations have appeared on television and in photographs—with cricketers and basketball players and religious figures. But his most ambitious work is yet to come. After he’s done with the ladies’ series (motorised stiletto, lipstick, vanity box and handbag) and the children’s collection of book, sharpener, pencil and pen, Sudhakar says he’ll return to a pet project: motorised animals. He has plans for a wild boar and a baby elephant, the first creatures in what will eventually become an animal park.

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