You’re going to be surprised where this custom Ford ended up.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the car with the movie named after it, was first seen on the big screen by the public in the late 1960s. It was a movie my grandma took my mom to see, I watched on VHS, and my son enjoyed on DVD. It is a charming and interesting movie about an eccentric inventor, his kids, his female companion, and the biggest star, the custom former race car he brought back from the brink of being scraped.
Ken Adams was the mastermind behind what the mad inventor Caractacus Potts came up with for the vehicle in the cult classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Starring Dick Van Dyke and based on the same titled novel, the imagination it took to create the car took some serious creativity. The challenges of the role for the car would take six different iterations, with only one actually running and the rest were movie props, used in different ways as the car went through all terrains, including the air.
The running car was powered by a 3.0-liter Ford 6 cylinder engine. It sported a dashboard plate from a WWI British fighter plane, and had a red and white cedar boat deck. It was registered as a Gen 11 plate, and was fully street legal.
Pierre Picton owned the car from 1970 through to 2011 and touted it around to various automotive events in the UK. When 2011 rolled around, the car went up for auction, and was taken home with a winning bid of $805,000.
So who was the lucky bidder? Peter Jackson, the famous name behind the Lord of the Rings films. The car is physically located in New Zealand, with a GEN 1I plate because GEN 11 was taken. He used to raise money for different charities whenever the opportunity comes up.
