Chitty Bang Bang was the informal name of a number of celebrated English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 racing

Auto racing

Auto racing is a motorsport involving the racing of cars for competition. It is one of the world's most watched televised sports.-The beginning of racing:...

 cars, built and raced by Count Louis Zborowski

Louis Zborowski

Count Louis Zborowski was a racing driver and automobile engineer.-Biography:His father, Count William Eliot Morris Zborowski was also a racing driver, and died in a racing crash, in 1903 at La Turbie Hillclimb in France near Nice...

 and his engineer Clive Gallop in the 1920s, which inspired the book, film and stage musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (disambiguation)

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang may refer to:* Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a 1968 film* Chitty Chitty Bang Bang , a novel by Ian Fleming which was the basis of the film* Chitty Chitty Bang Bang , the car of the same name...

.

The Chittys were built and stored at Higham Park, Zborowski's country house at Bridge

Bridge, Kent

Bridge is a village and civil parish near Canterbury in Kent, South East England.Bridge village is situated in the Nailbourne valley in a rural setting on the old Roman road, Watling Street, formerly the main road between London and Dover...

 near Canterbury

Canterbury

Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....

 in Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

. The cars were so loud that Canterbury reportedly passed a by-law prohibiting them from entering within the city walls. The origin of the name "Chitty Bang Bang" is disputed, but is believed to have come from a salacious World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 song.

Chitty 1

Chitty 1 was a chain-driven customised Mercedes

Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz is a German manufacturer of automobiles, buses, coaches, and trucks. Mercedes-Benz is a division of its parent company, Daimler AG...

 chassis containing a 23 litre 6 cylinder Maybach

Maybach

Maybach-Motorenbau GmbH is a German luxury car manufacturer. It was founded in 1909 by Wilhelm Maybach and his son. The company was originally a subsidiary of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH and was itself known as Luftfahrzeug-Motorenbau GmbH until 1912.Today, the ultra-luxury car brand is owned by...

 aero-engine. It won two races at its debut at Brooklands

Brooklands

Brooklands was a motor racing circuit and aerodrome built near Weybridge in Surrey, England. It opened in 1907, and was the world's first purpose-built motorsport venue, as well as one of Britain's first airfields...

 in 1921, coming second to another Zborowski car in a sprint race at the same event. Chitty 1 was fitted with four seats and a crude, over-sized exhaust pipe, in order to misguide the handicappers and spectators. Its top speed on the day was 100.75 miles per hour (162.14 km/h).

For its next outing, Chitty 1 was refitted, as a two-seater with a cowled radiator and a properly plumbed exhaust. It attained nearly 120 mi/h on one occasion, and had its race handicap consistently reappraised. It subsequently crashed, removing three fingers from a timing official. The car was rebuilt, and passed into the ownership of the sons of Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...

, but was quickly retired as a racing car, and was later bought for spare parts by John Morris, the Maybach engine being offered to W.Boddy, editor of Motor Sport.

Chitty 2

Chitty 2 had a shorter wheelbase, an 18.8 litre Benz Bz.IV aero-engine and the coachwork was carried out by Bligh Brothers of Canterbury, England. It was never as successful as its predecessor, but took part in several road races, including a Sahara Desert expedition in 1922. It later became the property of the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum

Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum

The Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum, is a museum in the University Circle neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. Part of the Western Reserve Historical Society, it was founded by industrialist, Frederick C. Crawford, of TRW and opened in 1965...

 in Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

. It is now part of the private collection of Bob Bahre at his home in Paris Hill, Maine (the former mansion of Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln's first Vice-President).

Chitty 3

Chitty 3 was based on a modified Mercedes chassis with a 160 hp Mercedes single overhead camshaft six cylinder aero engine, tuned to produce 180 hp. The car recorded a lap of Brooklands at 112.68 mi/h. Louis Zborowski later used it as his personal transport, and drove it to Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

 when he negotiated to join the Mercedes racing team.

Chitty 4

Chitty 4 (also known as the Higham Special) was Louis Zborowski's largest car yet. Using a 450 hp V12 Liberty

Liberty L-12

The Liberty L-12 was a 27 litre water-cooled 45° V-12 aircraft engine of 400 horsepower designed both for a high power-to-weight ratio and for ease of mass production.-History:...

 aero engine of 27 litres capacity, with a gearbox and chain-drive from a pre-war Blitzen Benz

Blitzen Benz

In 1909, the Blitzen Benz was built in Mannheim by Benz & Cie. The vehicle was one of six built with a , inline four engine enlarged from the company's Grand Prix racer. The car was modified to improve its aerodynamics. At Brooklands on November 9, 1909, land speed racer Victor Hémery of France...

, it was the largest capacity racing car ever to run at Brooklands. Still not fully developed by the time of Zborowski's death in November 1924, it was purchased from his estate by J.G. Parry-Thomas

J.G. Parry-Thomas

John Godfrey Parry-Thomas was a Welsh engineer and motor-racing driver who at one time held the Land Speed Record. He was the first driver to be killed in pursuit of the land speed record....

 for the sum of £125.

Parry-Thomas rechristened the car Babs

Babs (Land speed record car)

Babs was the land speed record car built and driven by John Parry-Thomas. It was powered by a 27-litre Liberty aero-engine.Babs began as 'Chitty 4', one of Count Louis Zborowski's series of aero-engined cars named 'Chitty Bang Bang'. As it was built at Zborowski's estate of Higham Park near...

and rebuilt it with four Zenith carburettors and his own design of pistons. In April 1926, Parry-Thomas used the car to win the Land speed record

Land speed record

The land speed record is the highest speed achieved by a wheeled vehicle on land. There is no single body for validation and regulation; in practice the Category C flying start regulations are used, officiated by regional or national organizations under the auspices of the Fédération...

 at 171.02 mph (273.6 km/h). However, he was killed in the vehicle in a later attempt on 3 March 1927. Babs was buried at Pendine Sands

Pendine Sands

Pendine Sands is a length of beach on the shores of Carmarthen Bay on the south coast of Wales. It stretches from Gilman Point in the west to Laugharne Sands in the east. The village of Pendine is situated near the western end of Pendine Sands....

 in Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

, but was later recovered and restored and is now on display at the Pendine Museum of Speed

Pendine Museum of Speed

The Pendine Museum of Speed is dedicated to the use of Pendine Sands for land speed record attempts. It was opened in 1996 and is located in Pendine, on the South coast of Wales....

.