The first thing I ever typed into a search engine (as far as I can remember) was Bligh, the name of one half of my family, and an action that had lasting consequences on the following few years when it provided the starting point for some investigative family history.
My mother (who put the real research in) found that a large portion of my ancestors were creative and practical people (printers, jewellers, stone masons, seafarers and coach builders) - and we always knew there was a point in the first quarter of the last century when horse drawn vehicles saw their first real competition, and motor-powered vehicles started to come in.
My family in Ramsgate had been coach builders for a few generations, and with the technological advances, had turned their skills to the new technology of cars. At this stage there still weren’t too many differences between the building techniques used for the two forms of transport.
We discovered in the ensuing research that for a period whilst they we’re still living in Ramsgate, the family had themselves taken to constructing cars under the name of Bligh Brothers. We’d never seen or heard of this minor manufacturer until then, but have since been aware (and optimistic) that potentially one of these rare machines might still be locked away in someone’s collection, or at least their might be some photographic record.
A few months ago a battered and dismembered lantern from a Bligh Brothers car turned up in an eBay auction, but like all these things, was lost to a higher bidder. It was therefore a bit of a surprise to find that American comedian and talk show host Jay Leno was to supply us with an unexpected twist to the Bligh Brothers story.
As a keen collector of vintage cars, Leno recently launched a website where he catalogues his extensive collection of vehicles. During a routine Google for Bligh Brothers related images, this photographic gem surfaced, an image on Leno’s car site with the accompanying note,
So, it’s only by coincidence that Jay Leno happens to be in this photograph standing behind the car. This picture was taken this August at Pebble Beach and the car is a modified 1921 Mercedes Bligh Brothers Tourer. As I learned from Jay at the event, the car was created by England-dwelling, Polish nobleman Count Louis Zborowski who created four high-performance large-engined vehicles all dubbed by him to be “Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang” (words derived from Cockney rhyming slang). This car, number 2 in the series, was built on a Mercedes chassis around an enormous 18.8-liter Benz BZ IV series aircraft engine. Back in the day, this 230 horsepower engine was able to carry the car to speeds reaching 113 mph. Zborowski raced the car only once at Brooklands and later took the car to tour the Sahara Desert.
Author Ian Fleming was inspired by the Count and his cars and adopted the cars’ name for his novel “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” - which in 1968 was made into the successful movie.
It seems so strange to find this. It’s one of those nuggets of interest that lost in the transition from one generation to the next. To rediscover that the car was both a desert tourer and also the inspiration for Fleming’s immensely famous children’s book is really quite special - in fact it was one of four, and now the only surviving one. An 18.8 litre aeroplane engine - that’s insane even by modern standards. Not content to leave it there, another one in the ‘Chitty’ range was fitted with an incredible 450bhp aeroplane engine. Even more extraordinarily, a modified Chitty 4 went on to claim the World Land Speed Record (171.02mph) before killing it’s driver and owner, JG Parry-Thomas on the third attempt when the neck-height drive chain snapped with pretty gruesome consequences.
As it happens quite a few people took photos at the event and there is now a pretty good public record of images, plus one or two other pieces of Bligh Brothers information have come to light in recent days. Hopefully one day I’ll actually get to see that one; the now-reconstructed Chitty IV, or perhaps even the original Chitty II Tourer.