From the My Hemmings pages: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Tell ya what: Instead of football football football tomorrow, why not pop in a copy of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the whole clan to watch while digesting all that turkey? It’s not only a great family film, but one of the stars is a car, one that’s likely to get your kids, nieces and nephews excited about vintage cars. And as a bonus, the movie’s based on a book written by Ian Fleming, who took inspiration from real-life aero-engined racers that terrorized the English countryside.

Can’t get your hands on either the film or the book? Then take a moment to indulge in the photos of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – the only one of the six cars created for the film that’s actually fully functional and roadworthy – that My Hemmings member darkgrafix recently uploaded to his My Hemmings page. From his description of the car:

This is the original driving car that was used in the film and the final product weighed approximately 2 tons, was 17 feet long, and built on a custom made ladder frame chassis. NO detail was spared in her creation. Many traditional forms of car-building were re-employed, and modern technology stepped in to create a vehicle which was both accurate enough to fool veteran car experts when under the microscope of 70mm cinema cameras and hard-wearing enough to withstand everything from driving in sand to driving on cobbled streets and down stair-cases. The wheels were moulded in alloy to replicate the timber wheels which would have been true to the period. The boat deck was of red and white cedar and built by boat-builders in Windsor, and the array of brass fittings were obtained from Edwardian wrecks. What couldn’t be obtained was faithfully and accurately re-created. The alloy dashboard plate was from a British World War I fighter plane. All of this was built around a modern Ford V6 engine with Automatic transmission. Chitty rolled out of the workshop in June 1967 and was registered with the number plate GEN 11 given to her by Ian Fleming in his novel. The other vehicles all bore GEN11 but this was purely cosmetic. Only “the original” was registered with this plate and used in the road-driving sequences. Because of the high level of detail on the vehicle and the rough treatment it was about to encounter during film-making, a second “near-identical” vehicle was constructed as a stand-in for the more dangerous scenes and was also used for the “in studio” shots. Another “no-brass / no-engine” dummy version was built to be dunked in sea-water, and another slightly different car was also built for trailer work and to be used as a stand in. Both of these are now on display in England. Another light weight fibreglass shell was mounted on two “disguised” speedboats for sequences “at sea” and was actually seaworthy. “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” was a huge popular success, and although it’s profits did not make it a blockbuster – this was due to its overwhelming cost rather than lack of audience. It still remains one of the most watched movies of all time and is regarded as a family classic.

By the way, we confirmed that this is Pierre Picton’s GEN 11 Chitty, which you can read more about at his website, chittygen11.com.