TAARZAN: when purple was a Panic

 

Taarzan...... the heartbeat of the 00s. And the title track, ohh .... it's still murmuring in my mind after 21 years. 

We have all seen the film Tarzan the wonder car anytime in our lifetime. The Manorama of the film was the purple breathtaking car powered by a spirit of a betrayed victim. I saw the car first time when I was in LKG. It was a jaw-dropping experience, literally it was awesome. Literally I've seen the film more than 10 times and not a single time I have become bored rather every glance of the car was mysterious. Let's dive deep into the mysterious history of the Epic creation beyond the film screen.

How it started

The car was designed by Indian car designer Dilip Chabbria as a part of the sportscar fleet of DC designs. In the film, to replicate the real conditions, the designer (Ajay Devgan in the reel) was named as Deven Chaudhary. It was derived from a Toyota mr2 of 90s which churned out 300hp and received heavy physical and mechanical mods inspired by another concept of DC called 'the Infidel'. 

It's front fascia was designed to look like a deadly creature with an aerodynamic sleek body design which was way ahead of its time as far as the year 2004 was concerned. It looked majestic. Even in the film, a scene was shown when the protagonist Raj's friend commented on the car as, "aisi car to maine books mein bhi nhi dekhi !".

How the film went

Dilip Chabbaria decided to produce the car for the mass market. At that time DC designs were producing some of the most futuristic concept car designs of India and were rising effectively. So they decided to advertise the car and gain publicity with mind boggling idea of producing an entire film with some extra drama dedicated solely to Tarzan. 

4 CR was spent in producing the film. We'll not discuss the plot of the film as most of us already know it. It is said that 4 Tarzans were made for the shoot out of which 2 were exploded and 2 survived. The car was projected as a murder machine embedded with a betrayed victim's spirit determined  to kill his enemies. The car was seen with some extraordinary powers of self healing, was seen jumping being fired crashing houses, materials, lives, and blazing through the roads. 

A fun fact was that, it had a horn of a truck. Through the movie, the car got a new identity. But unfortunately the film proved to be a big flop in the year 2004 just collecting mere 4 CR of revenue.

Sad Afterlife

After the film, with some still left hope , Dileep decided to sell the car through auction which was the one and only way of selling the car with some profit. It was priced at 2 CR. There also, it proved to be a flop and did not get sold. The main reason was the flop film and overpricing. At that time at 2CR, we had other more premium, powerful and luxurious sportscar from even foreign manufacturers better than it. 

Sadly it ended up it's life reciding carelessly at the streets of Mumbai. The scenes are really haunting for real Tarzan fanboys. For many years it had no attention.

Jungle jungle baat chali hai, pata chala hai......

Tarzan fanboys believed that the car would never rejuvenate and decided to remember tarzan as a piece of nostalgic history keeping it at a corner of their heart. But we know that every cloud has a silver lining. It's now bought by an independent garage of Mumbai called International engg. and works and they are now restoring it to roar back to life. The body work is completed but there is a lot of major works in the interior. The process was delayed for some time by them but again they are trying to hit it on the roads as soon as possible. As soon as the car rolls on the roads, again palpitating the streets, it would bring content to our heart and again revive the nostalgia. Let's cheer for Tarzan's better 2nd life. Fingers still crossed....

#taarzan #car #film

#hridanshu #chatterjee