MUMBAI: Many years later, when their daughters got married, fathers would proudly remember the day they had the good sense to book a Bajaj Chetak — an unavoidable dowry item of the somnolent seventies and eighties.

Bajaj Auto has finally written the epitaph of the scooter that is an icon of post-Independence Indian industry, and perhaps also a waspish reminder of its arrogance. The company’s Akurdi plant rolled out the last Chetak two days ago.

“Like Volkswagen Beetle, the product had lost its relevance. We stopped production on December 31. We have some stock. So the sales will continue till March,” Rajiv Bajaj, MD, Bajaj Auto, said.

Rajiv said his company, which introduced the Chetak in the early seventies, had produced approximately 10 million scooters under the brand.

“The consumer has given up on the product. Except minor tinkering, it had remained unchanged for more than 30 years. But then, that is what consumers wanted, a strong, reliable vehicle for the family. They used to call it the car on two wheels,” he said.

Rahul Bajaj, Rajiv’s father and chairman of Bajaj Auto, said, “In North India for two or three decades, marriages did not happen without a Chetak. It was a compulsory dowry item. It is emotionally very close to us. People used to wait for long periods.”

The lead time for delivery of a Chetak, named after the famous stallion of 16th century Rajput king Maharana Pratap, used to be a decade, with a part of the price paid in advance.

However, there was one other way to shorten the wait to just a year: You could book Hamara Bajaj by coughing up US dollars, a rare commodity in socialist India of the seventies.

Inside the Bajaj Auto, Chetak is today seen as a symbol of Bajaj’s monopolistic past. “It is a history I would like to forget. My company has lived too long on nostalgia,” said Rajiv who is credited with bringing the company back into the race after Japan’s Honda and compatriot TVS left it gasping for breath.

“Holding on to anything from the past is a sign of weakness,” he reiterated.