Split car sequence in Paati Sollai Thattathe: Here's how the team did it

Aruna Guhan, one of the producers and creative directors of AVM Productions, one of the oldest and most-reputed Tamil production houses, has disclosed that it was her dad, producer MS Guhan, who was the brain behind the popular car sequence from yesteryear superhit, Paati Sollai Thattathe.

The film featured Pandiarajan, Urvashi, Manorama and SS Chandran in the lead.

Taking to Instagram, Aruna wrote, "From when I was a child, I have always been in awe of how my dad could take anything apart and put it back together. Be it a TV or a car, every appliance or piece of technology in between, he is a wizard at solving the issue or fixing it."

She always wanted to be like that. "For Patti Sollai Thattathe, they wanted to create a car that could separate into two halves while it was running and each half would run independently. It was dad's technical expertise that created this for the movie."

Aruna added, "He bought a Volkswagen and designed it in such a way that it separated in the middle. The engine of the Volkswagen was in the rear, he left that as it was and fitted the engine of an auto-rickshaw in the front. The car was called the 'Supercar' and went on a tour of Tamil Nadu for the publicity of the movie."

The film went on to be a roaring success. The car, which was one of the star attractions of the film, caught the attention of kids and thereby brought family audiences to theatres large.

Aachi Manorama added a bold new feather to her comedienne cap, performing stunts in an automobile chase scene in this film.

Initially, Aachi was apprehensive about doing this stunt scene. She said she was too old for it. Then, the makers had to convince her, ‘You are the hero, heroine and everything in the film. If you do this, the film will be a super-duper hit. It will succeed 200 per cent’. She agreed and, once she got started, she enjoyed doing and aced them.

Directed by Rajashekar, the film hit the theatres in 1988. A man marries against the will of his grandmother and has to leave home. When he gets a chance to reconcile, he makes another mistake. He hires a baby to show as his own to please the old lady. What happens when the latter finds out the truth, forms the storyline.

Paati Sollai Thattathe was remade into Telugu as Bamma Maata Bangaru Baata in 1990.