His love for vintage beauties knows no bounds

KOZHIKODE: An idea that entered Harikrishnan’s mind as a law student at Mysore four years ago has now grown into a rare vintage collection of vehicles.Today advocate Harikrishnan is the proud owner of 17 vintage vehicles.“As a student at Mysore, I got exposed to bike clubs and vintage biker gangs. Gradually I began to learn about bikes and their history. The craze grew even after I came back home,” says Harikrishnan, who hails from Kunnamangalam here.His collection includes motorbikes like Jawa, Yezdi Roadking, Italian Lamby and also the ever-time classic blue Italian Vespa.Though he is in for motorbikes, he also owns a Mark I, the first model of Ambassador that was launched in the country in 1961.Another interesting fact about Harikrishnan is the way he collects the vehicles.“Whenever I travel to some major cities, I visit the garages and workshops there and randomly ask for old vehicles on sale. Most of the vehicles there would need heavy repair. So I buy, bring it home and repair it,” he says.“I never buy old vehicles that cost above `1 lakh.Sometimes people even give me their vehicles for a token money after they get to know about my collection,” he says.His wishlist of bikes includes the classy BSA Triumph which was popular in the 1950s.He is also in search of Bond motorbikes and Norton bikes which were the first motorbikes to hit the road.Harikrishnan’s collection is often exhibited at colleges in motor expo events.“We rode his Italian Vespa to the expo at our college. It was almost a 100 km ride on a very old scooter,” says Edwin Fernandez, who was one of the coordinators of the motor expo at Nehru College of Engineering where Harikrishnan’s bikes were recently displayed.“Harikrishnan’s collection is pretty good. Soon it will become a true vintage collection of which he could be proud of,” says Jude Wilson, who is also a bike collector and a founder of the Mysore biker club Jawa-Yezdi.