A Homely Relic on Wheels Awakens Nostalgia in Iran

TEHRAN — On a recent Friday afternoon, in the upscale Shahrak-e Gharb neighborhood in West Tehran, Porsches, Toyota Land Cruisers and Mercedes-Benz two-seaters drove up and down the street, music blaring from high-powered speakers that were quickly turned down for passing police cars.

Iran, where gas is still only about 50 cents a gallon, has a thriving car culture, reminiscent of Southern California in the 1960s, with young people cruising around, showing off their wheels. The flashier the car, the more looks and flirts its driver gets here, and last Friday it was Saeed Mohammadi’s shiny 1972 eggplant purple Paykan that got all the action.

Wearing Ray Ban Aviator glasses and a black hat typical of Iranian street thugs from the 1970s, Mr. Mohammadi, 21, beamed self-consciously, taking in all the glances and smiles from female drivers and cheers from the guys. His ride? The dorkiest car on the street.

“Look at the Paykan,” one young woman said from a car window. “I used to be driven to elementary school in one.”

Eight years after they went out of production and were thrown into history’s dustbin, Iran’s onetime national car, the Paykan, is making a comeback. Not that many people are especially interested in driving it again, with its manual steering and gearshift, rough ride and omnipresent gasoline vapors. But its surge in popularity — it is the subject of a documentary and two art exhibitions — seems to represent a longing for a simpler past.

“Every Iranian has memories of this car,” said Shahin Armin, 37, an Iranian-American design engineer who used to work for Chrysler and Honda in Detroit. “Maybe not always good ones, but we are romantic people. When people see a Paykan nowadays, they are reminded of a time when we had fewer choices and simpler lives.”

Mr. Armin, who moderates a Web site dedicated to the car, Paykanhunter.com, returned to his native Iran last year and quickly found himself caught up in what he calls the “Paykan revival.”

“I guess now that times are difficult again, the car reminds us of our own survival as a people.”

He stood in the Dastan Gallery in North Tehran where Iranian expatriates visiting from the United States and Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, had gathered around a burned-out Paykan on display in the middle of the sleek gallery. Sipping espressos, they peeked through the opened-up keyhole of its back trunk, which showed a childhood picture of a boy sitting in the open trunk of a Paykan.

“This is amazing,” one of the visitors said of the car. “It doesn’t get more Iranian than this. This is history on wheels.”

Hanging out of a back door, suspended on nylon wires, were several loaves of noon-e sangak, a traditional Iranian bread baked on pebbles. One of the headlights showed an eye reflecting video of a car being driven through the streets.

“The bread symbolizes making money,” said Mr. Armin, explaining that the Paykan was a workhorse that enabled many lower-middle-class people to earn extra income as freelance taxi drivers.

For many Iranians, the Paykan was the first step up in life, as oil money started trickling down to the people during the rule of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Introduced in 1967 and based on the British-built Hillman Hunter — itself a forgettable car from Britain’s struggling postwar auto industry — it had extra strong bumpers to withstand Iran’s chaotic traffic.

The shah, a Westernizer who tried to modernize his country at a rapid pace, endorsed the car, calling it a source of national pride. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Paykan, like Iranian society, underwent intense, if cosmetic, changes. Already basic, it was stripped of anything remotely fancy, like chrome and a radio, and mass-produced only in white.

“What I remember as a kid is feeling so anonymous in this sea of white Paykans, sitting in the back seat of one myself and seeing other completely similar cars and families drive by,” said Mr. Armin, who is making the documentary on the Paykan.

For Iran’s leaders, the car was a political statement, first as evidence that the country was moving upward in the world, and later as a revolutionary symbol of resistance to outside pressures.

Average Iranians have a different view of the car. “We see in it our own adaptability and flexibility toward different times and ideologies,” Mr. Armin said. “Whatever happened in those days, the car was around and continues to be seen on the streets, just as whatever happens, people will be around. In a twisted way, the Paykan is a source of inspiration.”

Everybody in Iran has a love-hate relationship with the car, he said, noting that every Iranian older than about 15 has stories of pushing a broken-down Paykan to get it running again.

“There is such a duality regarding this car. We love it for the memories it carries of our childhood, and of its survival,” Mr. Armin said. “But it is also the tragedy of Iran that while we have so many talented people here, they continued producing almost exactly the same car for four decades just because people had to buy it anyway.”

Now, if nicely restored, the Paykan again makes heads turn.

Driving up and down Iran Zamin Street, the cruisers’ favorite, Mr. Mohammadi wore a broad smile when yet another car filled with young women flashed its lights at him.

“My dad married in this car,” Mr. Mohammadi said, one hand on the wheel. “Now I am picking up girls with it.”

For years he felt discomfort when taking out his father’s car — which is in mint condition — fearing he would look poor compared with those driving imported luxury cars. But he said that had changed.

“This is one of our few sources of pride,” he said of his Paykan. “Only now people are starting to appreciate it.”
A version of this article appears in print on October 24, 2013, on page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: A Homely Relic on Wheels Awakens Nostalgia in Iran.

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