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Is the “Bujji” car real?
Just recently Bujji’s pics were dropped on Instagram leaving car guys awestruck and in praise mostly because Bujji exists in real life.
Well for starters it is a prop car made for the upcoming South Indian movie “Kalki 2898 AD”. A post-apocalyptic space epic loosely based on Hindu mythology. It stars some of the big names in the Indian industry like Prabhas as Bhairva, Amitabh Bachan, Kamal Haasan, and is the most expensive Indian movie ever with a budget of $75 million (it’s a lot INR).
Bujji has an R2D2/Spirit of Ecstacy style robo driver that peeps out and scans things around her (yeah, it’s a girl) all the while mocking and providing amusingly negative opinions to the Protagonist Prabhas who encourages her to look at the situation in a sort of glass half full way.
The car/plane/Trike hybrid has a rocket booster and what appears to be a gun turret mounted on the roof clearly whoever designed the prop has done awesome work.
How was the “Bujji” car made?
Luckily I stumbled upon a video explaining how Bujji was made The concept is nothing new but its execution is simply awesome.
“Bujji” is a South Indian nickname for naughty kids: Think Slugger or a Brat. She is voiced by a famous South Indian actress Keerthy Suresh and in the video above she keeps on taking a jibe at the team’s rather slow progress on designing her body inciting humorous responses in the process.
So the idea was to make a car that is controlled by a sarcastic, intelligent, and amusingly insensitive robot. The team behind Bujji who worked in a makeshift shed consisted of experts like Haisu Wang, Nitin Zihani Choudari, Dana Miller, Velu, Harsha Venna, Saad, Ramesh, and Vishnu.
The most apparent part of the whole design is easily the hubless front wheel that weighs 250 kg (500 pounds each) and has custom calipers enveloped by special order tires made by the Indian tire company CEAT.
Despite using Aluminum to keep the weight down the whole prototype weighs over 6 tonnes and is steered by electro-hydraulic steering. For reference, the Current Hummer EV weighs around 4.5 tons!!
The concave roof was made using cutting-edge acrylic glass which was heated at 1500C and is 200 cm long. It pops up using hydraulics allowing Prabhas to easily get in and out.
The director of the movie Nag Ashwin is a self-confessed EV guy who settled on a twin Kirloskar-sourced Induction Motors and a 47 kWh battery pack for Bujji.
Why does it remind me of Blade Runner?
Judging by the photos above it looks a lot like Spinner from Blade Runner 2049 which Ryan Gosling flies to and fro from his HQ. Some might even say it looks like the Bat Tumbler from Dark Knight most notably the top view. While its futuristic canopy reminds me of the Lamborghini Egoista.
Bujji is a big thing for a relatively modest Indian Sci-fi industry. It features groundbreaking CGI and a quirky personality that the audience can easily relate to. It will certainly be one of the top 10 movie cars of all time in no time.
More details will be provided soon as “Kalki 2898 AD” edges closer to its theatrical debut on 27 June 2024.
