The flying car Chitty Chitty Bang Bang from the famous Dick Van Dyke film (eBay).
A car alleging to be the original hero car from Ian Fleming's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has wound up on eBay, apparently in running condition. According to the seller, the film's production manager insisted that the hero car be a fully-functional road car, not just a mock up.
To that end, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang sports a 3.0-liter Ford V6 and automatic transmission, mounted in a one-off ladder frame. The body features a handmade aluminum hood and red and white cedar boattail rear. Unfortunately, none of Chitty's magical powers made it to the road car, meaning this thing won't fly.
The seller claims that all the brasswork on the car came from actual Edwardian-era cars, to make sure Chitty Chitty Bang Bang looked as true-to-life as possible. That sounds like a lot of work to go into a car for Hollywood, even a hero car.
The seller provides a convincing back story on the car, but there's no official documentation shown or offered. This is no-doubt a well-built car, and very well could be the original from the movie, but at a starting bid of $1,000,000, we'd need a lot of confirmation before pulling the trigger. Not that we could afford it anyway...
We aren't sure who built this or why – we're not even sure what it's called (we think it's "Chainlink") – but we're quite sure it's brilliant. Perhaps the new champion of wheel travel, the off-roading beast has around seven feet of articulation at each wheel, up and down.
Controlling all that climbing and dipping is a Rube Goldberg gear network: 5.38 gears and centrally-mounted ARB air locker, chain gears at the swingarm pivots, and chains inside the swingarms to work Hummer hubs at each wheel. But just follow the jump to watch it in action and you'll see what we mean. It's spectacular. Hat tip to Mike S!
Basket Case Builder Charles Guan hasn’t been pulled over yet. “I’m going on karma,” he says.John B. Carnett
Who needs brakes? When you’re converting a junk-stuffed shopping cart into an electric joy-ride-mobile, they’re the last thing you worry about. MIT undergrad Charles Guan’s LOLriokart—the name is a mash-up of Web and videogame-speak—grew out of his membership in the MIT Electronics Society, a student engineering club. With no plans to build a vehicle, he looked around the club’s shop and spotted the shopping cart, some discarded wheels and an electric engine normally used in high-performance golf carts. He cut off the shopping cart’s wheels, stripped out the basket underneath, and designed mounting plates for the motor, batteries and electronics.
Machining metal wasn’t new to Guan, who has built a number of robots as well. But trouble started when he got to work on the specialized electrical components, especially the controllers that manage the current flowing from the battery to the motor. “I managed to blow up my circuit a good four times before getting it to work,” he says.
Guan ultimately did decide to add brakes, and now he has a set that works. Initially he tried cannibalizing the kind used in kids’ electric scooters, but his 250-pound rig fried them on the first go. He’s found in test drives that collision risk is minimal anyway. “When you’re driving something this weird,” he says, “everyone tends to stay away from you.”
Taking Charge:Guan juices up the batteries overnight using a low current to avoid overcharging them. John B. Carnett
How LOLriokart Works
Time: One year Cost: $300
That was Easy:The big red button directly in front of the steering wheel is an emergency fallback that cuts power to the motor. John B. Carnett
DREAM HANDLING Guan controls the rear-wheel-drive LOLriokart through a custom-made steering system. The batteries, motor and drivetrain sit at the wheel line and weigh 160 pounds, giving the cart a low center of gravity even when he’s riding inside.
UNDEAD BATTERIES Guan found a set of nickel-cadmium batteries donated for a solar-car project at MIT. They had been lying around for years and were partially dead because of internal crystal growth, so he used a variation of a process called zapping: He hooked each one up to a lead-acid battery and pumped it full of current, frying the crystals and revitalizing the batteries. Guan has already done a test run of six miles, and he calculates that the cart could travel nearly twice that. An hour of charging with a high current can revive the batteries, but he prefers to charge them overnight with a low current.
RUNAWAY SPEED According to Guan’s math, given its weight and motor power, the cart could have gone 45 mph. That seemed a little risky, though, so he switched in a smaller motor sprocket, which cuts the rate at which the chain turns the rear axle. Using a go-kart throttle, he can vary between a gentle walking pace and 30 mph.
SLOWING DOWN Guan had been stopping Fred Flintstone–style, jamming his heels onto the pavement through a gap in the bottom of the cart. Once, his quick footwork helped him avoid being hit by a train. But he recently installed some mountain-bike disc brakes—mostly to cut down on shoe wear.
Creating a Monster:During an early test in the shop, the cart sprang to life and a wheel burned a hole in the floor. John B. Carnett
Released at EUROBIKE on September 2, 2009, the “YikeBike” by the Kiwi design team is a radical electric bicycle that just weighs 9.8 kilograms and folds to 67×56×12 cm to fit in a backpack. Featuring a small powerful 1.2 kW electric motor and controller that replaces chain pedal, gear box, mechanical brake, cables or levers, the YikeBike is gonna be the first bicycle on the market with electronic anti-skid brakes. Looking like a mini version of a penny farthing (mini-farthing), the vehicle also integrates lights, indicators and brake lights on a hard carbon light platform, ensuring the safety as well ease of the ride.
Slated to be showcased at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show next month, the BMW Vision EfficientDynamics is a 2+2 sports concept car with plug-in full-hybrid technology that not only ensures high performance but also low fuel consumption and thus low carbon emissions, maintaining BMW’s latest design philosophy. Touting attributes like BMW ActiveHybrid, economical combustion engine and aerodynamics, the futuristic vehicle integrates a hybrid drivetrain with a 1.5 liter, three-cylinder turbo-diesel engine, located in front of the rear axle, is capable of reaching 62 mph (100 km/h) in just 4.8 seconds with the top speed of 155 mph.
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All you art collectors out there. Here is a chance to get a Giclee copy of some of Ian M Sherwin work. Ian is planning on doing a whole series of Marblehead, Massachusetts paintings. His work is amazing.
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