If you hap­pen to live in the La Ro­maine area by the Gulf City traf­fic lights or have tak­en a Sun­day morn­ing trip in the vicin­i­ty, chances are that you have caught a glimpse of a pa­rade of vin­tage and clas­sic ve­hi­cles just off South Trunk Road or at least a view of a parked line­up of the old-time ve­hi­cles.

The con­vert­ibles, sta­tion wag­ons, pick­ups, trucks, and oth­er au­to­mo­biles from the 1920s right up to the 80s, of­ten cre­ate a spec­ta­cle as many peo­ple slow down to take pho­tos or record the awe­some sight.

The own­ers of these ve­hi­cles are a group of old-school car en­thu­si­asts known as the T&T Clas­sics An­tiques Repli­ca Club (T&T CAR Club) who meet every Sun­day for break­fast from 9 am at the Gulf City traf­fic lights in front of Star­bucks. Every last Sun­day of the month, they as­sem­ble on af­ter­noons to al­low for mem­bers un­able to make Sun­day morn­ings, and de­pend­ing on whether or not it is a hol­i­day week­end, a few Sat­ur­days are thrown in. They are a pas­sion­ate and ded­i­cat­ed bunch, the club’s pres­i­dent Ish­war­lal Mon­gru told the Sun­day Guardian.

“It’s re­al­ly a nice (fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed) ac­tiv­i­ty. We have our wives with us, we have the fam­i­ly with us, so it’s a nice hob­by where you can in­cor­po­rate your whole fam­i­ly and that’s the beau­ty of it,” he said.

Ini­tial­ly formed in 1986 by a group of car lovers, in­clud­ing Brij Ma­haraj, Hen­drick­son Seenath and Derek Smith, who are still cur­rent­ly in­volved, the T&T CAR Club host­ed car shows, pa­rades and oth­er car-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties like the San Fer­nan­do Grand Prix for many years. Mon­gru said he and oth­ers re-en­er­gised the club in 2013 and as part of the man­age­ment team of their af­fil­i­ate the Brij Ma­haraj Au­to and Her­itage Mu­se­um in Vista­bel­la, he set out to get young peo­ple in­volved in de­vel­op­ing an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of T&T’s au­to­mo­tive her­itage, na­tion­al her­itage and his­toric preser­va­tion.

Ma­haraj is a re­tired me­chan­i­cal tech­ni­cian and busi­ness­man whose per­son­al col­lec­tion of ve­hi­cles is show­cased at the mu­se­um along­side oth­er vin­tage and clas­sic ad­di­tions and in­ter­est­ing old-time house­hold arte­facts.

Apart from their Sun­day morn­ing gath­er­ings, the club’s 1,200 plus mem­bers keep in touch via a What­sApp chat and Face­book page, ex­chang­ing ad­vice and en­cour­age­ment, and or­gan­is­ing and ad­ver­tis­ing events. The bustling Gulf City cor­ner al­so acts as their meet­ing point when they go off on trips and oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties mon­i­tored by their close to 1,800 Face­book fol­low­ers.

The first choice among ladies is the club’s MGA convertible.

Mon­gru nur­tured a love for old-time cars since first see­ing an un­re­stored Mor­ris Mi­nor, a small British car that ri­valled the Volk­swa­gen Bee­tle, in his youth, and be­cause his fa­ther had al­so come to own one.

“I al­ways liked old cars. I love see­ing them on the road. I al­ways ad­mired them, but ob­vi­ous­ly, com­mon sense had to pre­vail and life’s pri­or­i­ties came first. When I reached 40 years, there’s a joke: I told my wife I have to get ah ole ting and I got per­mis­sion to buy the car, so I went ahead,” he joked.

The car Mon­gru pur­chased was none oth­er than a 1967 Mor­ris Mi­nor, and the own­er hap­pened to be a re­tired news­pa­per colum­nist and pho­tog­ra­ph­er named Derek Ale­ong.

Launched in 1948, the an­tique car se­ries was man­u­fac­tured up un­til 1971 by Mor­ris Mo­tors, British Mo­tor Cor­po­ra­tion and British Ley­land.

“That was Britain’s re­sponse to the Volk­swa­gen and it was a very small-en­gine (1.1 cc) car to as­sist with the high fu­el prices af­ter the world war,” Mon­gru ex­plained.

Part of the car’s ap­peal for him too was that it was a rare ve­hi­cle kept in “pris­tine” con­di­tion by Ale­ong. Mon­gru’s Mor­ris Mi­nor is prob­a­bly the on­ly ve­hi­cle of that era in Trinidad run­ning reg­u­lar­ly with the orig­i­nal fac­to­ry paint, he said.

The vin­tage car con­nois­seur al­so has oth­er rare ve­hi­cles, most of which are British-made.

The club clas­si­fies the ve­hi­cles in­to three broad cat­e­gories. Any car man­u­fac­tured be­fore World War II is con­sid­ered an­tique, clas­sics are cars that were made af­ter World War II up to the 80s or are gen­er­al­ly over 30 years old, and repli­cas are lo­cal­ly as­sem­bled kit cars with im­port­ed parts. Mon­gru said repli­cas were rare as they were on­ly al­lowed in this coun­try be­fore re­stric­tions by the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty. An ex­am­ple of a repli­ca is a 1929 Mer­cedes on show at the mu­se­um.

Some the T&T CAR Club’s antiques line the road near Gulf City.

The club’s favourite ve­hi­cle is per­haps a mod­i­fied 1937 Buick nick­named “the Boat” be­cause of its large size. Of course, the fact that it is a con­vert­ible may al­so be cause for its pop­u­lar­i­ty among mem­bers.

And the pub­lic’s favourites? There are a few, Mon­gru said.

“Peo­ple go crazy when they see the (Ford) Mod­el T (pro­duced from 1908 to 1927) which might be the old­est run­ning car in Trinidad. We had that in Southex (car show) last year and they just went crazy. It’s the nos­tal­gia; that was the first mass-pro­duced car.

“You would find that with the Mi­ni (Mor­ris Mi­ni Trav­eller) what made it great was that it was the pat­tern that sub­se­quent man­u­fac­tur­ers took to make front-wheel-dri­ve cars,” he ex­plained, adding that the first choice among ladies was the club’s MGA con­vert­ible, “that red lit­tle car with white tyres.”

He said the Ford Capri was al­so well-loved and had won many tro­phies.

He said, sur­pris­ing­ly, ladies were the most die-hard fans of the club’s ve­hi­cles and the most faith­ful event plan­ners and par­tic­i­pants. Still, the ve­hi­cles ex­cite feel­ings of nos­tal­gia for many and chil­dren and teens al­so show an in­ter­est.

“We just like to dis­play the cars, let peo­ple have a lit­tle bit of fun, ad­mire them be­cause when peo­ple see those ve­hi­cles they re­mem­ber: you know my fa­ther had this, I learnt to dri­ve in that, I used to go to school and ten of us used to sit in the back seat. You hear all the sto­ries and emo­tions com­ing out. You re­al­ly bring smiles to peo­ple’s faces,” he said.

“Don’t have cars and leave them in your garage. Let peo­ple see them and re­mem­ber them so they can show their chil­dren: this is what we used to do, the car had this kind of gear, that kind of sus­pen­sion, this was the en­gi­neer­ing. And you could prob­a­bly in­spire some young chil­dren to go in­to me­chan­i­cal or elec­tri­cal trades.”

The Ford Model T is a favourite among the antiques of the T&T CAR Club.

The club’s ac­tiv­i­ties are nu­mer­ous, rang­ing from fun events to more se­ri­ous caus­es. The most re­cent edi­tion of their an­nu­al Clas­sic Cars n Cui­sine in April drew from the mu­se­um dis­play, fea­tur­ing bi­cy­cles with a sno-cone man and a dou­bles man rid­ing the bi­cy­cles, Mon­gru re­called.

“We sold the dou­bles ten cents for one for the fun of it. We want­ed to cre­ate a long­time era and in that Cars n Cui­sine, we used bi­cy­cles from the mu­se­um.”

He made sure to add that the sno-cone was made from shaved ice man­u­al­ly grat­ed or shaved down from big blocks of ice rem­i­nis­cent of back in the day and peo­ple wel­comed the old-time touch­es as they gath­ered to see the ar­ray of the club’s ve­hi­cles.

Re­cent­ly, the group vis­it­ed Sam­my’s Res­i­dence a his­toric house in San Fer­nan­do with per­mis­sion, took mem­o­rable pho­tos and held a mi­ni-pa­rade through the city. The group’s oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties in­clude par­tic­i­pa­tion in the an­nu­al Southex car ex­hi­bi­tion at Gulf City, a reg­u­lar Sun­day Break­fast, vir­tu­al car shows and dec­o­rat­ing the cars with Christ­mas lights and dri­ving around to bring cheer dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

The club al­so em­barks on so­cial work like at­tend­ing so­cial ral­lies and dis­trib­ut­ing ham­pers “on the low” as their aim is not to draw at­ten­tion to their char­i­ty ini­tia­tives. At the height of the pan­dem­ic, they or­gan­ised a lit­er­al vac­ci­na­tion “dri­ve” where, along with po­lice es­cort, they drove through the streets of San Fer­nan­do with signs to raise aware­ness of the ben­e­fits of the COVID vac­cine when they felt the na­tion was slow to re­spond to tak­ing the jab.

Point­ing out that it was im­por­tant to have an un­der­stand­ing and sup­port­ive wife to have such a de­mand­ing hob­by, Mon­gru said his wife, Rhon­da, en­joyed the car-club life and he even re­stored a 1984 Jaguar XJ6 as a present for her. The car is less com­pli­cat­ed to op­er­ate than some of the oth­er an­tiques or clas­sics and she proud­ly dri­ves it around at times.

They al­so go for dri­ves with their two chil­dren around the city, up to Ch­agua­nas or San­gre Grande or as far as Fyz­abad, Debe or Pe­nal in the south.

Ishwarlal Mongru’s wife Rhonda with her Jaguar XJ6.

Mon­gru who has a pas­sion for restor­ing an­tiques in gen­er­al like old ra­dios, said they have re­mod­elled their garage, signs and all, to fit a vin­tage theme. They have even de­vot­ed a part of their home to fam­i­ly me­men­toes Mon­gru has pre­served. His fa­ther’s Tex­a­co badge, dri­ver’s per­mit and cam­era, his moth­er’s wed­ding dress and a pot­tery jug his grand­fa­ther used are on full dis­play for guests to their home, he laughed.

As for the re­sponse from his chil­dren who are teenagers at­tend­ing pres­ti­gious sec­ondary schools, they had ob­jec­tions at first, but have had a change of heart to­wards their fa­ther’s old-time ve­hi­cles over the years.

“The chil­dren now, when they were younger, they would say: ‘Dad­dy, that’s ah ole car, we not go­ing in that’ or ‘Dad­dy, don’t car­ry we in school in the ole car nah.’ But af­ter they got a bit old­er and saw that these cars would be in malls at car shows, they re­alised that these are spe­cial cars,” he said.

His chil­dren’s friends at school would al­so come around and com­ment on the beau­ty of the cars and this led his chil­dren to ap­pre­ci­ate them even more. His daugh­ter even asked re­cent­ly which car Mon­gru would be pass­ing on to her one day.

Mon­gru who works in fi­nance said the club en­cour­ages vin­tage car own­ers to make use of their ve­hi­cles whether or not it is ful­ly re­stored and added that once you keep your car parked, it tends to give more prob­lems.

He said al­though restora­tion costs could be high, the club al­so in­sist­ed that car col­lec­tors not do quick fix­es, but in­vest the time and fi­nances to do worth­while restora­tions on the ve­hi­cles. He rec­om­mend­ed that peo­ple dri­ve their ve­hi­cles while fix­ing them grad­u­al­ly.

Lo­cal­ly, parts shops in Rio Claro and Clax­ton Bay spe­cialise in an­tiques. A few oth­ers may car­ry some old-time parts, he said. Some­times parts have to be im­port­ed. He re­vealed that the most chal­leng­ing as­pect of restor­ing a ve­hi­cle was the labour as it was hard to find me­chan­ics and ve­hi­cle body spe­cial­ists ded­i­cat­ed to sourc­ing the parts and see­ing the job through to com­ple­tion.

A Ford Model A from the T&T Car Club.

He said the club usu­al­ly rec­om­mend­ed parts and body shops, but most mem­bers do their own me­chan­ic work. He ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that most car re­pair­men had lost the art of tak­ing down an en­gine, re­build­ing it and re­turn­ing it to the ve­hi­cle. The same could be said of car up­hol­ster­ers, he said.

Mon­gru be­lieves that if prop­er­ly har­nessed, an an­tique car in­dus­try has the po­ten­tial to boost T&T’s econ­o­my like King of the Hill cir­cuit rac­ing ral­lies in Bar­ba­dos (al­though they use mod­ern cars) or old-world cars used for tourism in Cu­ba. He is cur­rent­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Na­tion­al Trust to see what could be worked out.

In the mean­time, he feels the old-time ve­hi­cles of­fer us beau­ty and qual­i­ties that can ben­e­fit our so­ci­ety.

“For me, the cars rep­re­sent eras of where we came from. They were eras when we were hum­ble and we didn’t need any air-con­di­tion­ing etc. We op­er­at­ed with a cer­tain lev­el of tech­nol­o­gy and we were hap­py with it. When you sit in an old car, you don’t try to dri­ve it like a new car. You put your frame of mind back to the old era it be­longs to and it brings you back to where your fam­i­ly came from and how far you have come. It keeps you hum­ble,” he said.

Stay tuned this Fa­ther’s Day–Sun­day June 19 for “A Car Sto­ry”, a heart-warm­ing tale sure to in­trigue.

Fol­low the T&T Car Club on Face­book @ ttcar­club