Long before imported luxury sedans became a familiar sight outside five-star hotels and film sets in India, a blue American-Australian sedan quietly rolled into a Bollywood frame — and into obscurity. Few moviegoers noticed it then, and even fewer remember it now: the Chrysler Valiant, bearing registration DLK 866, briefly appeared in the 1971 sci-fi thriller Elaan — and may well be one of the rarest cars ever captured in a Hindi film scene.
In a stylish airport pickup sequence, a chauffeur-driven blue Valiant arrives to receive actress Rekha from Bombay Airport. The moment is quick, elegant and cinematic — the kind of detail that production designers add for texture, not posterity. Yet today, that fleeting shot has become an automotive curiosity: evidence that the Valiant, never a mainstream Indian car, once touched Indian roads and reels.
A Car That Came From Australia — and Canada — to the Screen
The Chrysler Valiant referenced in historical records of the era traces back to the RV1 (R Series) — the first Australian-built Valiant model. Produced for a remarkably short window between January and March 1962, it marked Chrysler Australia’s early push into locally assembled full-size sedans.
Marketed also as the Plymouth Valiant in some contexts, the RV1 was assembled through an international pipeline:
- Completely Knocked Down (CKD) kits imported from Windsor, Canada
- Bodies painted at Chrysler Australia’s Mile End facility
- Final assembly completed at Tonsley Park, South Australia
- Total production: 1,008 units
- 672 manual sedans (RV1-2)
- 336 automatic sedans (RV1-4)
It was replaced within months by the updated SV1 — making the RV1 not just distinctive, but inherently rare from birth.
Bollywood’s Taste for Imported Metal
The film itself — directed by K. Ramanlal — starred Vinod Mehra, Rekha, Vinod Khanna and Madan Puri. A science-fiction thriller at a time when the genre was still experimental in Hindi cinema, Elaan leaned heavily on modernist props, technology themes and upscale visual cues. Imported cars — when available — helped signal sophistication and international flair.
Today, the film’s rights are held by Red Chillies Entertainment, the production house founded by Shah Rukh Khan — a modern custodian of a movie that accidentally preserved a rare automotive cameo.
A Vanished Machine
Unlike the Hindustan Ambassador or Premier Padmini, the Chrysler Valiant never established a sales or service footprint in India. Any example that arrived would likely have been privately imported, embassy-owned, or studio-leased. With limited parts support and virtually no ecosystem, survival odds were slim.
Enthusiast circles today suggest that no confirmed Chrysler Valiant RV1 examples remain registered or restored in India. If true, that makes the blue DLK 866 sedan not just a film prop — but possibly the last recorded Indian sighting of its kind.
Cinema often preserves what streets forget. In this case, a few seconds of celluloid may be all that remains of the Chrysler Valiant’s Indian chapter — a rare sedan, a rarer cameo, and a reminder that sometimes automotive history hides in the background of a movie scene.
