Blast from the past: Count Louis Zborowski in one of his Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang specials A
Playboy Count died at wheel

SEVENTY-FIVE years ago .      1923- 
next Tuesday, 
Count Louis      than a wealthy playboy was
Zborowski, creator of the ,
huge Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang 1
specials, was killed racing a
works Mercedes in the 1924
Italian Grand -Prix at Monza.
v Son of an American mother
and a Polish father, Zborowski
was born in England in 1895,
educated at Eton and brought up
at Higham, near Canterbury.‘
His father had been killed in 1903
hillclimbing a Mercedes in
France but this did not deter
young Louis, who started his '
racingcareer at Brooklands with
the Mercedes that had won the
1914 French Grand Prix.
The first of his Chitty
specials in 1921 was powered by
a 23-litre aero engine from a First
World War German Gotha '
bomber fitted in an old chain-
drive Mercedes chassis. The
Chitty nickname was said to
match the sound of the slow-
rewing engine. (Ian Fleming,
creator of James Bond, later
wrote a children’s book based on
the huge Chitty cars). ' »
Zborowski lavished his family
fortune on racing cars, investing
in the Aston Martin company to
build a grand prix car and buying
a Bugatti which he raced to
ninth place at Indianapolis in
, shown when he was offered
a works drive by the Mercedes
team in 1924, emulating his
father, who had also raced for
Mercedes. Like his father, he
would also meet his death at the
wheel of a works Mercedes when
he crashed at Monza.
Legend has it that his father,
Count Eliot Zborowski, had
crashed to his death in the La _
Turbie hillclimb when his 2
cufflink caught in the hand
throttle, dragging it fully open.
Count Louis was wearing those
same cufflinks when he was killed
at Monza. G
. EOIN YOUNG