Where to buy car art in India, and what a licensed print costs

Short answer. There are three honest ways to get car art on an Indian wall. Buy a new, officially licensed print from a specialist such as Automobilist, where posters start at €49 and the big ones sit at €109, plus €31.76 economy shipping to India and whatever customs charges apply. Buy an original period poster from the collector market, where prices run from under a hundred pounds to several thousand and the real risk is a fake. Or print a freely licensed image yourself in India for a few hundred rupees, and respect the licence that came with it.

Licensed new prints: the landed cost

Automobilist is the clearest case to price because it publishes everything. Its poster collection runs from €49 to €109, with event posters around €59 and heritage and special livery pieces at €109. Some are numbered: the McLaren M23 James Hunt Japanese GP 1976 piece is an edition of 500, and the Scuderia Ferrari HP 250 Grand Prix Wins poster is an edition of 250. Common sizes are 50 x 70 cm, 40 x 50 cm and 30 x 40 cm. Fine art prints are €199, metal prints €149 and frames €39 to €59.

Then add the cost of getting it here. Automobilist's own rate card lists India under its Asia zone at €31.76 economy and €33.93 express, with shipping free above €400. The site also says plainly that import taxes and fees set by your country are not included and cannot be borne by the seller, so budget for customs duty, IGST and the courier's handling fee on top. That is the main trade-off of this route: the artwork is licensed, the edition is traceable and the paper is right, but a €59 poster is not a €59 purchase by the time it reaches Pune.

Two ways to soften it. Order the smaller 30 x 40 cm size and frame it locally, because Indian framing is far cheaper than importing a frame and a frame adds shipping weight. Or club an order with two or three friends to clear the €400 free shipping line.

Originals: the money and the fakes

For period posters, Hagerty's interview with collector Paul Veysey is the most useful thing to read before you bid. He built a collection of about 3,000 vintage car and movie posters over 30 years, had around 1,500 left for sale at retirement, and says prices run from less than a hundred pounds to several thousand. His authentication checks are physical: size, paper quality, folds and smell. Fakes are around. Buying unseen from abroad means you are trusting a photograph of a piece of paper, so buy from a dealer or auction house that states condition and provenance, and expect to pay for linen backing and glazing later.

If you want to see originals in India first, the Heritage Transport Museum at Bilaspur Taoru Road near Gurugram holds enamel advertising signs, vintage advertisements and travel posters in its memorabilia section, and is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 7 pm.

The free route, and the line we do not cross

The cheapest legal option is a freely licensed photograph. Wikimedia Commons hosts only free content, either public domain or under licences such as CC BY, CC BY-SA and CC0, and it requires that commercial use and derivative works be allowed. Your duty as the reuser is attribution and, for share-alike licences, publishing derivatives under a compatible licence. Print that at A2 in India and you have a legal poster for the price of paper.

What you cannot do is lift a press or agency photo. Goodwood's media centre, for example, carries image captions stating that no sales are permitted without the photographer's written agreement and that sharing with third parties is prohibited without permission. Press images are for editorial use by accredited media, not for your living room or your club's merchandise.

Sources

• Automobilist posters collection
• Automobilist shipping rates
• Perfect poster art: a veteran collector's guide to getting started, Hagerty
• Commons:Licensing, Wikimedia Commons
• Heritage Transport Museum
• Goodwood Press & Media Centre