In 2002, French automaker Peugeot crushed the iconic Ambassador sedan with an elephant, in an award-winning ad. The Ambassador, a bulky, metallic concoction of a socialist era, simply did not fit into the emerging world of petite, efficient and high-tech hatchbacks. Peugeot’s ad beat the Ambassador into shape, bit by bit, until it resembled a 206 hatchback – allowing the film’s protagonist a fancier vehicle to flirt with.
The Ambassador was easy to mock in the 21st century. In 2013, Hindustan Motors sold only 2200 of them. A year later, they stopped making the iconic sedan – which had enjoyed one of the longest production runs of any car in history. Note that longest production means a car that has largely gone unchanged since 1948. The sedan was tough, and simply your only option if you could afford a car and the six-month wait that came with it.
But the Ambassador’s run was in a time where cars sold in thousands every year. Today, nearly three million cars a year are sold in India. Almost none of them will occupy a spot in the Indian imagination as iconic as that of the big, white Ambassador.
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