In Photos: End of the road for Kolkata's beloved yellow taxis
<p>Kolkata: Kolkata locals cherish their city's past, which is why many in the one-time Indian capital are mourning a vanishing emblem of its faded grandeur: a hulking and noisy fleet of stately yellow taxis.</p> <p>The snub-nosed Hindustan Ambassador, first rolling off the assembly line in the 1950s with a design that barely changed in the decades since, once ruled India's potholed streets.</p> <p>Nowadays it is rarely spotted outside Kolkata, where it serves as the backbone of the metropolitan cab fleet and a readily recognisable symbol of the eastern city's identity.</p> <p>But numbers are dwindling fast, and a court ruling means those that remain -- lumbering but still sturdy -- will be forced off the roads entirely in the next three years.</p> <p>"I love my car like my son," Kailash Sahani, who has sat behind the wheel of an Ambassador cab for the past four decades, told AFP.</p> <p><img src="/get/maximage/20250217_1739781174-873.jpeg?1739781174" style="width: 100%;" /></p> <p>"It's a simple car -- no electronics, no frills," the 70-year-old added. "It's unbelievable how much things have changed...