From farmers who swapped fields for cash to 20-something CEOs that inherited the family business, hot new money is flooding India's luxury car market as roaring sportscar engines announce the country's growing wealth on its roads.
No senior Indian executive feels complete without his sleek German-made saloon, while Italian sportscars are the new calling cards for the country's rich young things at exclusive nightclubs that screen guests at the main gate, not at the door.
"There is a rush to luxury," says Mohan Mariwala, managing director of Auto Hangar, surrounded by gleaming Mercedes Benz sportscars in one of his four Mumbai showrooms for luxury cars.
"Farmers, tiny industrial families, the younger generation with different value systems...You can't imagine the kind of people who invest in extremely exotic cars today."
Headline growth in Asia's third-largest economy may be stuttering, but decades of growth has spawned a new upper class with global tastes and aspirations that is driving a $1 billion luxury car market expanding at 40 percent annually, say industry analysts and research firms.
With India's population reaching 1.2 billion, and half the population living on the US equivalent of about a dollar a day, it's no wonder that the "one percent" there is looking to flash some cash. Income inequality may be awful in the US, but there are countries where it is far worse and it remains so.
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