I’m afraid that – while perhaps plausible – Geraldine Blake’s explanation of how Ian Fleming came up with the name Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Letters, 19 December) is almost certainly untrue. The young Fleming was a keen follower of motor racing at Brooklands and adapted the name from a series of four monstrous aero-engined cars – Chitty-Bang-Bang 1, 2, 3 and 4 – built by the eccentric Louis Zborowski in the 1920s.
The actual origin of the name Chitty-Bang-Bang is lost, but Zborowski is believed to have coined it either as an imitation of the sound low-revving aero-engines made when being started or in memory of a scurrilous (but also now lost) Royal Flying Corps drinking song. The latter may of course very well tie in with Geraldine Blake’s explanation!
Of the four cars, only the 27-litre Chitty 4 – aka The Higham Special and renamed Babs by JG Parry-Thomas, who was killed in it – survives, having been buried under the sand dunes at Pendine, Carmarthenshire, for four decades.
Fleming is also on record as having stated that he wanted the film version of the car to be designed and built by the tuning expert Amherst Villiers (1900-91), whom he rightly described as “a motor car and guided missile designer of absolutely top calibre”. The “Blower” Bentley 4.5 litre that James Bond drove in both Moonraker and Dr No was fitted with a Villiers supercharger.
Richard Armstrong
Timsbury, Somerset
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