Celeb automobile designer Dilip Chhabria has a great fall

By Quaid Najmi Mumbai, Dec. Dec 29 : After rising like a colossus over the niche but glamorous and lucrative field of vehicles designing, Dilip Chhabria – as familiar to celebs as his famed logo ‘DC’ – has suddenly and unceremoniously tumbled from grace.
Acknowledged as a pioneering trailblazer in automotive design, a concept that was practically alien to the Indian automobile industry, Chhabria, 66, stormed onto the scene in his 20s and over the years attained dizzying heights of fame and accolades.
Armed with a degree from the renowned ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena in California and brief stints with General Motors, Chhabria felt constrained to express and implement his creative ideas, and quit to join his dad’s electronic manufacturing unit in Andheri east.
The young man – who once said how since childhood, “he ate, drank and slept cars” – was revving to make an everlasting impression in his chosen field on a road less travelled but with a long journey ahead.
However, on a strict one-month notice by his father, he plunged into work by designing a humble ‘car horn’ in the family workshop – which not only became a rage but ploughed in more money in a month than his dad managed in a year.
Soon, he decided to try out his creative ideas to re-design his own vehicle – a Maruti Gypsy in 1992 – and his masterpiece creation ended up getting mobbed wherever he drove it.