Fugitive Billionaire Vijay Mallya And His Cars: Rolls Royce To Maybach [Video]
Royal Challengers Bengaluru lifting their first-ever IPL trophy has set the internet talking. It has also brought Vijay Mallya, the ex-owner of the team, back into discussions. A video has now surfaced, in which the businessman can be seen talking about his passion for fast cars and sharing details of his car collection.
Mallya says that he has always been passionate about fast cars. But he owned just a small number of vehicles in India. His garage here had a couple of Mercedes Benz models, a Maybach and a Rolls Royce. He, however, had one of the biggest classic and vintage car collections in the country. Mallya says that building a vintage car garage is a totally different ballgame.
Mallya's Huge Collection Of Vintage Cars
Back in the day, Mallya's empire was spread across India. He says he had asked his people to look for vintage cars. He adds that India witnessed the inflow of many imported cars in the 1920s and 30s. Most of these went into royal palaces. The Maharajas were the biggest customers of expensive cars like Rolls Royce. Later, many of these ended up in states of ruin.
Being a petrolhead, Mallya wanted to find and restore all of these. He adds that back then, he could source a dead Rolls Royce from a backyard in Telangana, for as low as Rs 50,000! He further adds that he has bought many cars which were rusted, had parts missing and were in near-dead conditions. Though it took time for the same, he loved restoring these. When he moved out of India, he had to leave these behind, as various governmental policies forbid such exports.
He goes on to say that he had bought a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost from the Nizam of Hyderabad. It, he says, had a unique body and was quite special. Another unique member of his garage was a French-origin, 1903 Darak which looked like a horsedrawn carriage and came with a single-cylinder engine.
Other Cars Owned By Vijay Mallya
To start with, Mallya was the first Indian to own an F1 race car. In the 1980s, he used to race it at the Sholavaram race track. The liquor baron also owned a V8-powered Ferrari 328 GTS. It had some of the finest specs of its time and could have had a price of around 1-2 Crores back then. This car is now reportedly owned by the Baroda Royal Family.
His India garage also had a Ferrari 512M and a Lamborghini Countach. His Rolls Royce Ghost had a White colourway and a PY registration plate. He used to own a Porsche Boxster as well. Another member of the garage was a Red Bentley Continental GT Flying Spur. This car was kept in Goa. One of his Mercedes Benz cars- a W220- was also finished in Red.
Another car in his garage is said to be the Jaguar D-Type. It was specifically crafted for Le Mans, and had classic proportions. After Mallya's downfall, this Jaguar was auctioned off for as little as Rs 1 Crore.
Mallya's Maybach had a classy Black-Brown colourway and a bespoke interior. Back in its day, the Maybach was available in two iterations- the 57 and 62. Mallya owned the 62. This car had later surfaced in the used car market with an asking price of Rs 2.49 crore. It has a VIP registration number of '9999'. It is said to have just 33,971 km on its odometer. The car is powered by a 5.5-litre twin-turbocharged V12 petrol engine that churns out 543 bhp and 900 Nm.
