from its royal collection of vintage beauties to its 100yearold assembly building hyderabads aging heritage is fast fading into oblivion if the fast furious gen y has shunned the old wheels for racier mean machines a visionary government has ensured that a newage transport system raises its head to eventually render the architectural relic out of sight captain k f pestonji never tires of talking about his babies ever since he brought them home about two decades ago the garment seller pestonji is also president of the chermas group has ensured that the little ones are comfortably nestled in the basement of his expansive residence in chirag ali lane overly pampered and almost spoilt rotten that despite the lapse of time then these wonderwheels still radiate an immaculate shine and never fail to make heads turn with their majestic gait each time they vroom out of their den to take a stroll down the citys roads comes as no surprise dexterously assembled over four years between 90 and 94 the captains royal fleet comprises among many others a 1933make packard and a limousine cadillac 1936 which came straight out of the maharaja of holkars garage legend has it that the emperor gifted this engineering masterpiece fitted with a modern intercom facility for passengerdriver communication to his second wife a gorgeous american lady there is also the buick special 1956 and the limited edition hupp mobile 1955 sharing space in his mansion with a second world warera jeep believed to have been used in the famous battle of kohima 1944 clearly pestonji makes no effort to shield his undying passion for this vintage indulgence from the rest of the world the captain is equally upfront about another thing his babies arent for sale i sell only garments is his standard retort to anybody daring to ask him the forbidden question and while that might be true of many oldtime collectors of these fourwheeled beauties things sadly are rapidly changing in this land of the nizams along with the frightful trend of the fast furious gen y turning its back on these slow steady machines there is also the danger of investment brokers reducing these ancient artworks into mere products of profi t thats facing this grand wealth of hyderabad the high appreciation in the price of these cars has turned them into lucrative investment options explains dr i venkat rao president of the heritage car club of andhra pradesh also attributing this disheartening development to the crunch in storage space in the city to add a tinge of optimism however he says we still have a little over 500 vintage cars in town at present and thats a good number while a sizeable share of this populace of napiers and rolls royces flaunts the spotless white chowmahalla palace as its current address the rest are found decorating the lawns and cellars of those like pestonji or even rashid a q whos unmistakably one of