Motor racing
He attended the Jim Russell racing school. Later, he returned to India and started participating in the races held at Sholavaram, Chennai and Barrackpore, Kolkata. His first race was 1973 Sholavaram Grand Prix meet. Cars he raced ranged from Premier Padmini, Datsun 510, Sipani Dolphin, Formula Atlantic, several cars of his own design and in the final years Formula 3 cars. His last race was in a Formula Ford in Chennai's MMSC track. One of his early complete in-house designs was the Formula Monoposto based on the Formula Atlantic Chevron B40. During the early 1990s he purchased rights from a British based kit car manufacturer to build replica models of the Ford GT40, using a Ford Cosworth, Lotus 7, and AC Cobra.[4]
In an effort to make racing more affordable in India and improve grassroots level racing he designed and tested a small single seater, dubbed as India's Formula Ford, with a Maruti 800 engine, and adapting easily available parts, sometimes made in-house. His second design was a two seater car named McDowell 1000 using a Maruti Gypsy 1.0 liter engine. FISSME (Formula India Single Seater Maruti Engine) widely known as formula Maruti was launched in 1988.[5] The class was discontinued from the mainstream championship in 2006.
Kari entered in a few rallies. He later launched the JK Rally team in 1992. Kari's racing team was known as Super Speeds, and the main sponsor was Lakshmi Mills. The early cars had a white and blue body shell which was later switched to black and gold. The company that built his cars was P&B Engineering.
Kari was interested in many areas of mechanics, and that included his interest in aviation as his family owned a Cessna airplane. In 1989 he started a small manufacturing plant near Coimbatore to manufacture Power Gliders using a Yezdi 250cc motorcycle engine, later a Rotax engine. He would often test his gliders flying to the Ooty Mountains, Dindigul, Kovilpatti, or Kayattar near Tirunelveli. The small airstrip in Coimbatore later became the Kari Motor Speedway.