Louis Zborowski at the wheel of Chitty Bang Bang, with its huge exhaust pipe along the side
Louis Zborowski at the wheel of Chitty Bang Bang. Photo: Agence Rol, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Is the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car real? The flying car in the 1968 film is make-believe, but the name is not. A century ago, at a country house near Canterbury, a young man with a fortune built a series of enormous racing cars powered by aircraft engines, and he called the first three Chitty Bang Bang.

Ian Fleming drew on those cars when he wrote the children’s story that became the film. This is the story of the real ones: who built them, what they did at Brooklands, and what happened to them.

Open the snapshot: the whole story in five points ▾
  • The film car was inspired by real cars: four giant racing cars with aircraft engines, built in the early 1920s by Louis Zborowski at Higham Park, near Canterbury in Kent.
  • The first, Chitty Bang Bang 1, had a 23-litre Maybach aircraft engine and won two races on its first day at Brooklands in 1921.
  • The last, the Higham Special, had a 27-litre aircraft engine. After Zborowski was killed at Monza in 1924, J. G. Parry-Thomas bought it, renamed it Babs and set the land speed record at Pendine Sands in 1926.
  • Ian Fleming drew on Zborowski’s cars for his children’s story, written in 1961 and published in three parts from October 1964, two months after his death.
  • The main road-going film car was bought by the film director Peter Jackson and taken to New Zealand.

In this article

The man behind the cars

Louis Zborowski was born in Mayfair, London, on 20 February 1895, to American parents. His father, Elliott Zborowski, styled himself a count, although there is no firm evidence that the title was genuine, and Louis later used it too.

Elliott was a racing man, and he has a place in the story of British racing green: some accounts credit him with suggesting that each country race in its own colour, others with proposing green for the British cars at the 1903 race in Ireland. He was killed in 1903, in a crash at the La Turbie hill climb near Nice.

In 1910 Louis’s mother bought Higham Park, a country estate at Bridge, near Canterbury. She died the following year, and at 16 Louis inherited a fortune that included land in Manhattan.

He built his cars at Higham Park and in workshops in Canterbury with the engineer Clive Gallop, and the bodies were made by Bligh Brothers, a Canterbury coachbuilder. The formula was to put an aircraft engine into a car chassis. Nobody is sure where the name Chitty Bang Bang came from.

Chitty Bang Bang 1: 23 litres at Brooklands

The first car, Chitty Bang Bang 1, was finished in 1921. It had a 23-litre, six-cylinder Maybach aircraft engine in a modified Mercedes chassis, with chain drive, like a bicycle. At about 23 litres, that engine was 23 times the size of the 1.0 litre engine in Ford’s EcoBoost.

It started racing at Brooklands, the banked track at Weybridge in Surrey, in 1921. On its first day it won two races, including the 100 mph Short Handicap, which it won at 100.75 mph. It was later credited with almost 120 mph, and in 1922 it set its fastest lap, at 113.45 mph.

Louis Zborowski in Chitty Bang Bang 1 at Brooklands, surrounded by spectators
Zborowski in Chitty Bang Bang 1 at Brooklands. Photo: photographer unknown, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Its Brooklands career ended in practice for the September 1922 meeting. At high speed it shed a tyre, left the banking and smashed through the timing box. It was rebuilt, and after Zborowski’s death it went to the sons of Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes. It was eventually broken up for parts.

Chitty 2 and 3: the Sahara and Stuttgart

Chitty Bang Bang 2 had an 18.8-litre Benz aircraft engine and a shorter chassis. It was never as successful as the first car, but it travelled further: in 1922 Zborowski took it across the Mediterranean and into the Sahara.

Chitty 3 was built on a Mercedes chassis with a 160 horsepower Mercedes aircraft engine, tuned to 180. It lapped Brooklands at 112.68 mph. Zborowski used it as his everyday car, and drove it to Stuttgart when he was negotiating to race for Mercedes.

The Higham Special, which became Babs

The last of the line was the biggest. The Higham Special had a 27-litre American Liberty V12 aircraft engine, with the gearbox and chain drive from a pre-war Blitzen Benz. It was still not fully developed when Zborowski died.

After his death, J. G. Parry-Thomas bought it from his estate for £125, renamed it Babs and rebuilt it. In April 1926, on the beach at Pendine Sands in Wales, he set the world land speed record at 171.02 mph.

J. G. Parry-Thomas driving Babs, a long white racing car
J. G. Parry-Thomas in Babs. Photo: Agence Rol, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

On 3 March 1927 he went back to Pendine to go faster. Babs crashed, and Parry-Thomas was killed. The car was buried in the sand dunes at Pendine. Decades later it was dug up and restored, and it survives today.

Aston Martin, Mercedes and Monza

Zborowski did not only race his own creations. He was an early backer of Aston Martin, and drove for it at the 1922 French Grand Prix, alongside Clive Gallop.

Two Aston Martin racing cars, numbers 8 and 15, at the 1922 French Grand Prix
Clive Gallop (8) and Louis Zborowski (15) with their Aston Martins at Strasbourg on 13 July 1922, before the French Grand Prix. Photo: Agence Rol, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

In 1924 he joined the Mercedes team. On 19 October 1924, in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, he crashed at the fast Lesmo curve. Early reports said his Mercedes ran wide and hit a tree, but accounts of the cause differ. He was killed. He was 29.

From Kent to the cinema

Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, drew on Zborowski’s cars for a children’s story. He wrote it in 1961, while recovering from a heart attack, and gave the magical car in the story the registration GEN 11. Fleming died on 12 August 1964. The book came out in three parts: on 22 October and 26 November 1964, and on 14 January 1965.

The 1968 film made the car fly.

The film car was built from scratch, not on an old chassis. It was designed by the film’s production designer, Ken Adam, with the cartoonist Rowland Emett, and built in 1967 by Alan Mann Racing in Hertfordshire. Under the wooden body is a 3-litre Ford V6 engine with an automatic gearbox. Several cars were made for the film, but only one was a fully working road car: GEN 11.

The road-going car built for the film carried the registration GEN 11 too. In May 2011 it was put up for auction in Los Angeles, where bidding reached $805,000 (about £495,000 at the time). Reports differ on whether it sold that day, but it was bought by the film director Peter Jackson, who took it to New Zealand and has lent it for display there.

The real car had an aircraft engine. The film car could fly. I can’t help wondering whether that’s where Fleming got the idea.

Where are they now?

  • Chitty Bang Bang 1: rebuilt after its 1922 crash, then later broken up for parts.
  • Chitty Bang Bang 2: went to America, first to the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, and later into the collection of Bob Bahre in Maine.
  • Babs: dug up, restored and still running. On 27 April 2026, 100 years after its record runs, it was driven along Pendine Sands again.
  • The film car, GEN 11: bought by Peter Jackson and taken to New Zealand.

Over to you

Four enormous cars, each built around an aircraft engine. If you could see just one of them run, which would it be? Pick one in the poll below.

Which of Zborowski’s cars would you most like to see run?

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Test yourself

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Sources

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Mark Thompson
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