As a student of Don Bosco Park Circus, when he would pore over pictures of Mercedes-Benz cars in the magazine section of British Council Library, he knew he would have something to do with cars someday.

Now, at the heart of the advanced engineering team that shapes new design solutions for Mercs, Bharat Balasubramanian sure has quite a lot to do with cars.

Mercedes Benz cars may not exactly be flying off the racks in the city (22 units were sold between July and September) but this 57-year-old is Calcutta’s Merc of a man.

Balasubramanian is the vice-president of E/E (electrical engineering), IT and processes, group research & advanced engineering at Daimler AG in Stuttgart. He also heads the team sketching the automobile giant’s roadmap for sustainable mobility.

Three decades of living out his car dream has not distanced him from the Chowringhee where it was born as a 13-year-old. “Although I was born in Chennai and am a product of IIT Bombay, some of my fondest memories of India are from my early days in Calcutta,” Balasubramanian tells Metro. “My father was there as R&D head (engineer) at Voltas air-conditioning and I went to Don Bosco between June 1963 and May 1966.”

He loved cars, not the least his dad’s Studebaker, and being with Benz was his nirvana. Joining Daimler Benz in 1977 as a computational analysis engineer, the soft-spoken Tamilian rose steadily through the ranks to be crowned an innovation guru in Merc country.

According to Balasubramanian, BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) is a new focus corridor for Daimler AG. “Yes, India is important to the group, but not yet mission critical for us. Of course, it’s strength in knowledge and classical IT is attractive,” he smiles.

Mercedes-Benz, which clocked India sales of 2,700 vehicles in 2007, has scaled up projections marginally to 3,000 this year.

What about the perception of Calcutta, post-Nano? “The fact that the world’s cheapest car won’t roll out of there doesn’t do much for Bengal’s already battered image. And on a personal level, that’s a painful realisation for me,” admits the man who heads a team of 500 at the hi-tech Stuttgart hub.

Daimler’s Calcutta connection begins but doesn’t end with Balasubramanian. Marc-Oliver Nandy, the senior manager and executive assistant to the board member, group research & Mercedes-Benz cars development, is the son of Bikash Nandy of Serampore.

For the Nandys, the transition from Serampore to Stuttgart happened with Bikash’s move to Germany in 1964. Son Marc-Oliver later took up mechanical engineering in Stuttgart, the headquarters of Daimler.

“My mother is German, but the influence from my father’s side is extremely strong, and I have been to Serampore several times, where my grandfather used to own substantial property,” said Nandy, who will soon take up his new position as director & vice president at Mercedes-Benz Japan.