DC Avanti was called the first Indian sports car. However, it failed to gather the sales that DC was hoping it to. It was first unveiled at Auto Expo 2012 and went into production the same year. The Avanti was discontinued in 2016 because of the stricter automotive norms that were introduced in India. The sports car missed out on bare essentials like airbags. Now, there are a lot of abandoned Avantis lying at the DC’s manufacturing plant located in Talegaon. The condition of the Avanti sportscars does not look good as they have started to rust.

In the pictures, we can see that their are body shells of the Avanti that are rusting. Some of the vehicles are lying in the open gathering dust. It seems like there is also a prototype vehicle as its design is different from Avanti. The prototype has been left to rot in open. These pictures are uploaded by carcrazy.india on Instagram.

Avanti was a two-seater sports car that was priced around Rs. 30 lakhs before it got discontinued. It had a mid-mounted engine layout. DC used a 2.0-litre, four-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine that was sourced from Renault. The engine produced 250 bhp of max power and a peak torque output of 340 Nm. It was offered only with a 6-speed manual gearbox. The Avanti had a claimed top speed of 200 kmph.

The next project for DC was a new generation of the Avanti which would have been an electric vehicle. It would have been marketed as India’s first fully electric sports car. It was slated to launch in 2022. The powertrain of the electric Avanti was being developed in Switzerland. It would have been able to hit a ton in just 5.5 seconds from its 160 kWh battery pack. However, now all these plans are abandoned.

Dilip Chhabria got arrested

Dilip Chhabria was arrested by Mumbai Police because of a scam. His organization had documents that showed that 400 engines were imported for the Avanti sports car. But only 127 units of Avanti were ever manufactured and sold. Out of these 127 cars, 68 cars were used by Dilip and his family members. All these cars carried dual registration numbers. Most of the cars were used for fraudulent financing by taking loans from non-banking financial companies.

All of this started when Assistant Police Inspector Sachin Vaze received a tip that a DC Avanti was spotted in front of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai with a fake registration number plate. So, the police laid a trap to seize the car. Once seized, it was found that the vehicle was registered in Tamil Nadu but the chassis and the VIN was registered to Haryana RTO under a different number plate. Till now, police has seized 14 DC Avantis worth Rs. 5 Crores and they also seized 40 engines that were imported.

Dilip Chhabria is out of jail on bail now. He was first arrested on December 29th and was sent to jail on January 7th. Kapil Sharma who is a very famous comedian also filed a complaint against Dilip for not delivery a vanity van. Sachin Waze himself is currently in jail because of their involvement in Antilla bomb scare case.