Revisiting the good old days of motorcycle sidecars

Eshan Banodkar’s Bajaj Chetak with its sidecar is not just his favourite item anymore; his daughter Eshta has now laid claim to it as well. Pic/Aishwarya Deodhar

Think Sholay and the first thing that comes to mind is Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra singing Yeh Dosti Hum Nahi Todenge while zooming down a street in a scooter with a sidecar. While the 1975 blockbuster is known for many things, including its iconic dialogues and performances, the humble sidecar seems to have been lost in the lanes of history.

In India, motorbikes and scooters have long held a pride of place that's unique to the subcontinent. It all started in the 1950s, when Automobile Products of India (API) made inroads into the country with its scooters. From there on, players such as Enfield, Bajaj Auto, and Yamaha started manufacturing various scooters and motorcycles to suit the needs of the Indian consumers. But while motorcycles began to ply on roads, ones with sidecars - the small, compact attachments that could hold a child or two, a few bags of luggage, and even a pet - didn't become popular until nearly a decade later.

Eshan Banodkar's grey Bajaj Chetak, which he brought to ferry his daughter Eshta around. Pic/Aishwarya Deodhar

Sayed Thoufeeq, the third-generation owner of Kozi Wheels, a sidecar manufacturing business, recalls how bikes with sidecars were started by his grandfather back in the 1960s. "Sayed Abdul Wahab was the pioneer of manufacturing sidecars in India. He saw one in a movie about WWII and he thought it would be a great idea to start a business here," Thoufeeq tells us. "He kicked off his business in Mumbai in 1964."

Many Sindhi, Parsi, and Gujarati families owned them and the demand for them was at an all-time high in 1975, coincidentally when Sholay was released, with a waiting period of almost a year.

For Swati Chokshi, seen sitting here in the rider's seat, sidecars have always been very useful; she still ‘hangs out' with her friends and goes on rides on her blue Activa 5G; (right) Biking enthusiast and collector Keyne Wilson stumbled across a scrap sidecar a few years ago and decided to restore it. It is now fitted to his 500 CC Royal Enfield Machismo

These "three-wheeled motorcycles" were seen as a balance between buying a bike or a scooter, which could only accommodate two people, and investing in a full-fledged car. It was also seen as a safer option to scooters, where the chances of accidents were higher.

Post 2000, though, the demand began reducing when the Centre and then state governments banned the use of motorcycles with sidecars due to amendments in the Motor Vehicles Act. Regional Transport Offices no longer granted registration to such vehicles, and you could only own a sidecar that was already registered along with a motorcycle, or if you were a differently-abled person who needed it to ferry your equipment.

Sayed Thoufeeq and Sailee Bhiwandkar

Thoufeeq says that on an average, less than 10 people order it monthly. The demand today comes from abroad - from the US, Canada, France, Germany, and more recently, the UK. Families abroad see it as a convenient option for transporting luggage, pets and kids.

There are, however, those who are proud owners of these vehicles even now. Keyne Wilson, an automobile collector and designer, recalls how he stumbled across a vintage model in a garage in Dahisar after a year-long search in 2015. "I wanted to own a sidecar. I was hell-bent on having one, just for kicks," he says. Wilson restored the almost scrap-worthy piece over the next six months, a tedious process involving tinwork, fabrication, and painting, and attached it to an Enfield he owned, a 500 cc Machismo model. During the pandemic, he took it on a spin to Goa. The vehicle surprised him, he says, with the smoothness with which it carried him over the 600-km journey. "A friend and I strapped our bags into it and rode from Mumbai to Goa. We did it in 14 hours - I was doing about 80 to 100 km on the Pune-Bengaluru road. It was a ride I will never forget."

Wilson recalls how he grew up hearing stories of his grandfather, who owned a Triumph motorcycle way back in the 1960s. The love for motorcycles has been passed down in his family like an heirloom. "Since the time I had my first Enfield at age 14, redesigning automobiles has been a passion of mine," he reminiscences. "A bike called the Ural, which is a Russian bike with a sidecar, got me into them. It's the only bike that has transmission on the sidecar wheel."

Eshan Banodkar, a motorcycle enthusiast and founder of Let Me Tour, an adventure travel company, bought a grey Bajaj Chetak for his daughter in 2019. Although she'd never seen a vehicle like this before, he says, she loves sitting in the sidecar so much that she never lets anyone share the space with her. "I wanted to travel with my wife and daughter, all together," Banodkar says. "Seeing nuclear families sitting in their sidecars is very nostalgic for me."

Swati Chokshi, a retired medical lab technician from Mahim who currently owns a blue Activa 5G, remembers how she first learned to ride one. "I learned to ride it for my kids' activities, and loved it," says Chokshi. "I'll also tell you a secret - the things we've kept stored in the sidecar have never got lost. I learned to ride it in 1985 in three days. There were no ignition keys back then - you had to manually start it with a ‘kick'." To forego using cabs and to avoid buying a car, they opted to buy these vehicles instead.

Riding a bike with a sidecar requires a delicate balancing act. "It looks easy, but I tried driving it once, and I realised that it's heavier on the other side and you need to balance it well," says Sailee Bhiwandkar, the only woman to have ridden the longest distance on a vintage Vespa from Mumbai to Goa in 2019. She says that as a child, her grandfather owned a lot of Vespas, which were passed down to her family. Although they don't own any with sidecars now, the memories of riding along in sidecars stills stays with her. "It used to be a ritual after dinner - my grandfather, grandmother and I would go for a ride. I would sit in the sidecar, and we used to ride to Marine Drive, have ice-cream and come back home."

Apart from Banodkar's daughter, the memory of sidecars mostly remains with the older generations. The pair as iconic as Amitabh and Dharmendra was last seen with another equally memorable duo recently; Munnabhai and Circuit, plastered out of their minds, riding back to their native place joking about teaching history to schoolchildren.

"Even today, when I see someone with a sidecar, I'd request them for a ride," Bhiwandkar laughs. As for Wilson, whose Enfield sits snugly in a garage in Goa, waiting for a new adventure, "It is my dream to ride it to the Himalayas and back. It's going to be challenging, and not very comfortable, but I'd love to do a road trip on a bike like this," he concludes wistfully.