Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Transits do not, as a rule, fly but when Chitty Chitty Bang Bang took off in the film of Ian Fleming’s little masterpiece, there was a lot of Ford van in it. Now Pierre Picton, who has campaigned Chitty for 50 years, is to sell it. The creation of Rowland Emett and Ken Adams, it was built by the Alan Mann Ford racing team for the 1967 MGM United Artists film, starring Dick van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes and Lionel Jeffries. Picton’s GEN11 was the original used in the filming, a 2 tonner with a ladder chassis, leaf springs, a 3 litre Transit V6 and Borg Warner automatic transmission. It had to be tough and reliable for film work, it had to climb stairs but it also had to look the part. Its cedar boat deck was specially built by a real boat-builder in Windsor and the spoked wheels were cast alloy painted to look wooden. The dashboard with its realistic oilers came from a World War I fighter.

A second car was built for dangerous and studio scenes, a no-brass no-copper one for getting immersed in the sea (you can tell it from the aluminium exhaust pipes replacing polished copper), which had no engine. A third was effectively a fibreglass shell mounted on a speed boat, for the chases written into the adaptation of Fleming’s novel by Roald Dahl and Ken Hughes.

Ian Fleming was fascinated by the monstrous aero-engined Brooklands specials raced by the colourful Count Louis Vorow Zborowski. Like railway locomotives (see following blog) nicknames were coined for Brooklands racers; Old Mother Gun Bentley, the Aston Martin Bunny, the KN Vauxhall (Cayenne – hot stuff) so to imitate the slow-revving and occasionally backfiring power strokes of his first Higham Special Zborowski called it Chitty-Bang-Bang. At least that was the theory. A car’s name had to be approved for sensitive souls in the Brooklands paddock and the scrutineers had already turned down “Cascara Sagrada”, a herbal laxative. Zborowski turned instead to chitti chitti bang bang which, besides being onomatopoeic, had a racy association with a lewd World War I song. Officers on the Western Front obtained leave passes, “chits” in army parlance, for weekends in Paris, where they were entertained by ladies of the night. Chitty-Bang-Bang with the slightly altered spelling had a double entendre for male spectators at Brooklands, which would pass unnoticed by less worldly companions.

Zborowski, born 20 February 1895 made three Chittys before he was killed at Monza, when he crashed his Mercedes into a tree on 19 October 1924. Chitty 1 was completed in 1921 with a 23,093cc Maybach aircraft engine of the type used by German Gotha bombers. It had four valves per cylinder and developed more than 300bhp at a modest 1,500rpm. The chassis was principally Edwardian Mercedes and the body a rudimentary affair by Bligh Brothers of Canterbury. Handling was somewhat erratic owing to flexure of the chassis but it could do 120mph and was successful enough to encourage construction of Chitty 2

This was again a 6-cylinder, the 18,882cc Benz BZ IV with about 230bhp, could lap Brooklands at 113mph and with a touring car body was driven across France to Algeria and on to the edge of the Sahara by Zborowski and his boisterous chums. It still had chain drive to the back axle and was sold off to American collectors. Chitty 1 was bought by the Conan Doyle brothers, sons of the creator of Sherlock Holmes, after it suffered a big accident at Brooklands and it was broken up in the 1930s.

The third Chitty, again the work of Zborowski’s racing manager Clive Gallop, was a shaft-drive Mercedes-engined car which the Count drove only briefly before his death. In the meantime Gallop had designed a channel-section chassis frame, which was built by Rubery Owen, to hold the biggest engine yet, a 27,059cc V12 Liberty built in large numbers by the Americans to help win the First World War. This gave around 400bhp for what became the Higham Special, with final drive by side chains was a narrow strip of ⅜inch nickel-chrome steel to guard against breakage.

It was not enough. The Higham Special was bought for £125 by engineer John Godfrey Parry Thomas to tackle the world land speed record on Pendine Sands, Carmarthenshire. Renamed “Babs”, Thomas was driving it at around 175 mph on 3 March 1927 when the driving chain broke and 41 year old Welshman died in the ensuing accident. “Babs” was not forgiven and was buried on the dunes.

In 1969 it was controversially exhumed by engineering lecturer Owen Wyn Owen from what had become a military firing range. “Babs” was fully restored, a fitting tribute to the brave Parry Thomas. The original Liberty engine was replaced by a Lincoln Cars-built one, its twelve separate cylinders mounted on a Packard-Liberty crankcase.
Pictured at Broooklands in 2007, Babs is worked up for a demonstration run. The chassis is braced by strut and wire, much as contemporary Bentleys were, to improve stiffness. Plenty of batteries are needed to crank the enormous V12. Chain drives have substantial fairings.

King George V

Researching pictures for Dove Publishing’s Ford Centenary File turned up this 1965 C-registered Mark I Cortina alongside King George V, the 4-6-0 express locomotive by Charles Benjamin Collett, built in July 1927 for the Great Western Railway. First of the “King” class, No. 6000 was immediately shipped from Cardiff docks to the United States for the centenary celebrations of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, for which it earned a plaque and bell. Railway engines often had nicknames. “The Diver,” NBR224 built at Cowlairs and recovered from the Tay after the bridge disaster of 1879, remained on the rails until 1919. No. 6000’s soubriquet was, “The Bell” and according to Wikipedia was withdrawn by Western Region British Railways in December 1962, with 1,910,424 miles on the clock. So what about the publicity picture? Nobody at Ford seemed to know much, yet it looks as though it cannot have been contemporary because the Cortina’s C suffix was issued in 1965, four years after the locomotive was taken out of service. No. 6000 doesn’t look as if it has steam up although there is coal in the tender and the driver seems authentic. Was it languishing temporarily at the Swindon stock shed assigned to the National Collection in 1964? It was towed to London Stratford works, a temporary base for the Collection on 31 December 1966. Was it back in Swindon before being installed at the Swindon Steam Railway Museum in March 1968? It did sterling work hauling steam trains in the age of the diesel. In 1971 it hauled a Return to Steam Special from Birmingham Moor Street to Olympia. It then went from London to the Bulmer collection at Hereford, 525 miles, on 12 tons of coal and 125,000 gallons of water. It steamed until 1987 when its boiler certificate expired and went on exhibition at Swindon. No. 6000 was then swopped for British Railways Standard 9F 92220 “Evening Star”. All 89 tons of King George V (without tender, 137.5 tons in all) is now in the National Railway Museum, York. It has a 16.35in x 28in 4 cylinder engine. But no Cortina


Cortinas feature in The Ford Centenary File, published March 2011

Ford Anglo Saxon

A Ford that never saw production, the Saxon, based on the Cortina was built in 1962. Encouraged, perhaps, by the 2+2 Consul Capri of 1961, Sir Patrick Hennessy, Ford Chairman from 1956 thought it would make commercial sense. Engineer George Baggs recalled Sir Patrick’s personal interest: “We took the Saxon prototype up to his house one Sunday afternoon. The butler served tea.” It was pure Cortina up to the waistline; with a different boot lid and coupe roof it could have been produced for very little more than the regular saloon. It would have been lighter and with the GT engine also faster. Sir Patrick’s term of office was drawing to an end, however. He combined the posts of chairman and chief executive until 1963, retiring aged 70 on 3 May 1968. Plans were already under way for the much sportier, though fragile, Lotus Cortina. The ‘Anglo’ Saxon was taken to Detroit for evaluation and never seen again. Replicas have been made on cut-down Cortina shells but I never found out what happened to the original. Was it broken up or does it survive in a quiet corner of the Ford museum?

ABOVE: 1961 Capri, inspiration for the Saxon, used in research material for The Ford Centenary File, to be published March 2011

Motherwell Tramcar

Motherwell may not have had a lot in common with Buenos Aires except that both ran Manchester-made trams. Between 1902 and 1904 the British Electric Car Company Ltd made tramcars at Trafford Park. The Manchester Ship Canal enabled it to export from its little factory, well-equipped with overhead cranes, to Egypt, New Zealand and South America. Its 4-wheeled single-truck double-deck open toppers must have been good, selling to 30 towns in Britain so successfully that the firm was bought out by the rival United Electric Car Company of Preston, and promptly wound up.

The factory on the corner of Westinghouse Road and First Avenue was later leased by the fledgling Ford Motor Company (England) Ltd, to build the first Fords made outside America. Henry Ford always liked his factories to be close by docks. Trafford Park had access to America, bringing in component parts by way of the Ship Canal, and it was right by a railhead from which it could send completed cars.

Ford’s managing director, Percival Lea Dewhurst Perry, spent £2000 leasing the 5.5acre (2.2hectare) site, beside that of crane manufacturer Frederick Henry Royce. Born, like Henry Ford in 1863, Royce too went into cars and aero engines. Each Trafford Park factory had its own railway siding and by 1914 Ford was sending vehicles in covered wagons to 1000 dealers. Perry thought Manchester, “The very best geographical and economic centre for our business.” The workforce welcomed Ford; it paid the best rates, 10d to 1s 3d (4p to 6.25p) an hour although their terms of employment could shift them from trade to trade. Before the First World War Britain was Ford’s second biggest market after the US, and the company turned out, in the long run, more stable and consistent than the indigenous motor industry.

Research for Dove Publishing’s next book, which celebrates a hundred years of making Fords in Britain, has turned up some engaging detail, not all of which can be accommodated in a manuscript of even 130,000 words. I never heard the rattle of the “BE Standard Cars” that used to ply on Jerviston Road, past No 98 where I was born. By that time the Hamilton Motherwell and Wishaw Tramways Company had retired to its great Traction House in the sky, and Ford had its own Thames-side wharf at Dagenham.
The Ford in Britan Centenary File will be published in March 2011

The Motor: 13 October 1914

A GOOD PIECE OF WAR JOURNALISM crowed The Motor of 13 October 1914. The Manchester Guardian had reviewed a piece by the magazine’s Paris correspondent, entitled “A Day’s Motoring in the War Area.” There was no doubt that it would be all over by Christmas. Cancellation of the motor show at Olympia was a small price to pay for getting over the current unpleasantness.

Number one daughter is into vintage magazines and this World War I The Motor is one of her collection. War reporting apart, it was concerned with turning events in France to the motor industry’s advantage, Henry Sturmey proclaiming, “It is easy to shout ‘Capture German Trade,’ but by no means so easy to do it.” Sturmey had great hopes for the Russian market after the war following disappointment by the failure of British banks to support trade with Russia before it. Sturmey had set up a £30,000 deal for postal vans, the Russian government asked for six months’ credit, but his bank wouldn’t oblige so the contract went to Germany. Alas for punditry. Banks, governments, industrialists, economists and John James Henry Sturmey (1857-1930) never expect another four years of war, a shaky peace and the end of Tsarist Russia.

But what was the founder-editor of The Autocar doing writing in The Motor? Sturmey started The Autocar in 1895, but business connections with the rascally Harry Lawson and the equally dubious Edward J Pennington became problematical and he left Iliffe the publishers in 1901. The following year he tried to build American Duryea cars in Britain and founded The Motor in 1903. A towering figure in the early years of motoring journalism, he is perhaps best remembered as the developer, with James Archer, of a compact hub-mounted 3-speed gear for bicycles.

The Motor worried that readers might have difficulty recognising the chassis of the car illustrated as a Ford. “It looks more like a small Italian chassis than this well-known American make.” Ford had been making cars at Trafford Park for three years, yet The Motor firmly regarded it as American. Small wonder that by the 1920s its motor show appearance emphasised Britishness.
“With a body of low build such as this the entire appearance of the car is altered. This ingenious yet attractive body is by Oakley Ltd, 85 Regency Street, London SW. It is constructed of polished aluminium, with nickelled fittings in the rear of the radiator, which is surrounded by a black metal casing giving it a greater height and imparting the popular rounded edge appearance.”

However, there was no disguising the Model T, which teetered on its transverse springs. “A number of possible purchasers have taken exception to the high-pitched appearance,” counted as forthright, in an age when it was deemed discourteous to be critical of cars on page 297 that appeared in a full page advertisement opposite 299. “The body is built below the frame level, the footboards are lower than standard, and thus the general appearance of a low-hung car is obtained. Rudge-Whitworth detachable wheels with conical discs to allow of easy cleaning are fitted. Similar cars can be supplied for £220, with variations according to the fittings required.”

Oakley also made what The Motor called “an interesting modification of the Ford van.” This sold for £115, panelled in what was called matchboarding inside. It would carry about 10cwt (508kg), “and forms a most attractive proposition for the rapid delivery of light merchandise.”

Ford Kuga and Nissan Terrano

Should I replace the Nissan with a Kuga? When the time comes? The Nissan is taller (see above) but the room inside is comparable. A Kuga is on my shortlist. I bought the Nissan new in 1998 for something like £26,000, about the price of a decent Kuga now, yet it carries its years well, passing its MoT the other week, pausing only to have brakes dusted down. I bought it to replace a 1993 Maverick, its Ford twin, which had also been the soul of reliability so they have been a family mainstay for 17 years. With a stout chassis and non-rusting body I thought it would last for ever, and it very nearly has but its 2.7 diesel has the charm and refinement of a London taxi (no coincidence, lots of London taxis used Nissan diesels) and I now need something more saloon car-ish. Twenty years’ development in diesels shows. The Kuga is smoother, quieter and feels lighter. The only clue to being a diesel is a limited rev range but the strong torque and 6-speed automatic mean that scarcely matters. It was so much smoother and livelier than the Nissan I did actually stop and looked at the fuel filler (which is only a flap – it has no screw cap) to see if it said DIESEL. You can use the automatic like a manual if you want.
I have thought about an estate car yet I am reluctant to forgo four wheel drive. You only need it once in a while but in emergencies, winter, towing, or off-road occasions that happen infrequently you bless it. So, maybe a crossover, on a car platform, with a tall body, high seating, good ground clearance and the appearance of a Sport Utility. The Kuga behaves like a saloon car, handles securely, rides smoothly and doesn’t feel a bit like the harshly sprung Terrano. It hasn’t got a big strong separate chassis but its C-car architecture of Focus and C-Max provide a good balance of comfort and control.

Would a Kuga be big enough for the dogs? That is Wellington looking superior. The luggage space of 360l (12.7cuft) is smaller than a Focus but with the back seats flat it goes up to 1355l (47.8cuft), which is big enough. Underseat storage beneath the rear seats and the boot floor are practical features, the back seats have a 60/40 split and the flat glass upper section of the tailgate can be opened separately. I might miss the third row of seats. The Nissan’s have seldom been used; they are usually folded away or taken out and left in the garage but once again, what a boon on occasion. Their leather upholstery is like new. I would miss the Nissan’s leather. The seats on Kuga I had on test only had leather facings although they are well trimmed and practical. Kuga has some road noise and bump-thump, a bit of winfd noise on the motorway, but against the Nissan it is luxury. Although 41.7mpg is not as economical as some rivals it beats the Nissan’s 27.
The kerbside-opening door was never an inconvenience but the Kuga's upwards one is better. It has a little handle to help short people close it.
Tail-ender. Nelson would not be left out.