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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

"It's a simple car -- no electronics, no frills," the 70-year-old added. "It's unbelievable how much things have changed... The end of these taxi cars also marks our end."

Sahani is among thousands of Kolkata cabbies relinquishing their vehicles in line with tough emissions standards introduced........

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