On Saturday March 12, over 150 die hard petrolheads gathered at the Mercedes Benz showroom at Shaman Auto in Kalina. The occassion was the launch of the fantastic tome Winning ! Mercedes Benz.
It goes without saying that Adil Jal Darukhanawala the author behind this collector’s item is truly the father of Automotive Journalism in India. And that many in the crowd were there just to honour him and his work, even if they drove other brands !
Adil regaled the crowd with interesting stories including the one about how he accidentally got into automotive journalism while being a bystander on the Bombay Poona Highway watching the London-Singapore Rally pass through Poona in August 1977.
The beautiful book with over 197,000 words and hundreds of rare archival photographs from the Mercedes Benz archives find their way into the book.
Adil who is first a motorcycle man, but a close second as an automobile man said that the secret of his passion and success as a journalist is that he has never looked at it as work. That is clearly evident to anyone who has read his work over the decades or been fortunate to know him.
Thank you Adil. We look forward to the next volume in the series !
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