Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car could sell for $2m

If you always wanted to spend time at the wheel of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the magical car from the 1968 film of the same name, your chance is coming. But don’t expect matinee pricing - reports the Wall Street Journal.

The Los Angeles-based auction house Profiles in History says it will offer the car, which it says is roadworthy and fully functional, for sale on May 15. The pre-sale estimate: $1 million to $2 million. The estimate in part reflects the enthusiasm collectors have shown recently for vehicles associated with movies and movie stars.

A few years ago a Ferrari 250 GT Lusso once owned by the actor Steve McQueen sold for $2.3 million — about 10 times what garden-variety Lussos were fetching. Last year an Aston Martin DB5 used in the James Bond films “Thunderball” and “Goldfinger” fetched $4.6 million.

Chitty is a somewhat different story in that it was a one-off custom car and not a production model. The auction company says it was built by Ford to look like a car from the early days of the automobile while also being tough enough ”to withstand being driven driving in sand, on cobbled streets and down staircases.

The movie was based on a novel, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car” by Ian Fleming, who also created the James Bond character in a series of books.

As with the Bond and McQueen cars, prospective buyers will want to see as much documentation as possible attesting to the vehicle’s provenance. The collector-car world, after all, is famously fraught with fakes. Experts are still debating the authenticity of a Pontiac ambulance sold at auction in January. The ambulance was said to have carried president John F. Kennedy after his assassination in Dallas, but some say it is a replica of the actual car, which was destroyed decades ago.

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