update: the car is chugging along fine , takes a few minutes to warm up before running smoothly
i finally got around to my regular auto accessories store and asked the owner to find a set of used alloys. The owner got on his 2-wheeler drove to his store room nearby and brought back a box of wheel covers that 'look' like alloys acc. to him and this is good enough. Anything is better than the old wheel covers so i okayed this and he suggested i put sunfilm which is of legal level and charged me 1000 rupees for the wheel covers and 2000 for the sunfilm and sent me on my way. Below is the result of me stopping over at that shop one evening.