Born to Fly
Building a period-correct, aero-engined Maybach Mercedes
Article and Photography Barry Patchett and others
While visiting the Auto & Technik Museum Sinsheim on the MBCA Germany tour this September, members may notice a massive old Mercedes race car, powered by a huge Maybach aero engine. The label identifies it as a “Brooklands race car,” which it is not, though it is similar to the record-breaking cars that were raced on that circuit in England in the early 1920s.
The car isn’t even really of that period. Here is the story: This racing car was built in the early 1990s by Roger Collings, one of the world’s foremost exponents of antique Mercedes racing cars, to race at Vintage Sports Car Club (VSCC) of Great Britain events. I remember it well, having watched it run when I was a VSCC marshal.
Collings began his vintage racing career in the 1960s, competing for many years with a 1903 Mercedes 60 in VSCC races, speed trials, hill climbs and rallies. In the early 1990s, he decided to construct a car to entertain spectators at VSCC events while having some fun himself. Although a Mercedes 60 has fearsome performance for a car constructed prior to 1904, he wanted something more challenging, so he became the chairman of the Aero-Engined Car Club and began looking for suitable transportation.
The racing and road cars constructed in the 1920s by Count Louis Zborowski inspired Collings. Zborowski’s wealthy father Eliot was killed racing a Mercedes in 1903 at the La Turbie hill climb in France and Zborowski’s mother, one of the Astor family, died in 1911 when he was 16, leaving Louis the family estate “Higham Park” in Kent, plus seven acres in Manhattan, including five blocks on Fifth Avenue – a fortune estimated at $55 million – and much more.
Suddenly the world’s fourth richest teenager, Zborowski promptly purchased a Gordon Watney-modified Mercedes sports car in London. Enlisting engineer Clive Gallop of subsequent Bentley fame, Zborowski then constructed four vehicles using airplane engines on Mercedes chassis. Because of their distinctive sounds, spectators referred to them by the nickname “Chitty Bang Bang.”
Chitty I was built in 1921 on a lengthened chain-driven Mercedes 75 chassis with a 6-cylinder 23-liter Maybach aero engine. Successfully raced at Brooklands, it was later bought and raced by the sons of Arthur Conan Doyle. Chitty II, also built in 1921, had a similar, but shorter Mercedes chassis with an 18.8-liter Benz series Bz IV aero engine. It was used primarily as a fast road car and is now on display in the Bahre Collection in Maine. It is sometimes referred to as “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” after the car in Ian Fleming’s book and the Walt Disney motion picture of the same name, though the only connection is that Fleming thought children would be amused by the sound of the nickname of Zborowsky’s cars.
Chitty III was based on a 28/95 Mercedes chassis fitted with a 6-cylinder, 14.8-liter Mercedes aero engine and was known as “The White Mercedes.” In 1924, Zborowski also started Chitty IV, the “Higham Special” (later known as “Babs”), a Liberty L12-engined land-speed-record car. It used a gearbox and chain drive from a 200-horsepower “Blitzen Benz.” Its next owner, John Parry-Thomas, was killed on the Pendine Sands in Wales when the power chain broke during a land-speed record attempt in 1927. The car was immediately and unceremoniously buried at the accident site, and only decades later exhumed and restored by Owen Wyn Owen. Chitty IV is now displayed alternately at the Brooklands Museum and Pendine Museum of Speed.
Collings’s tribute to these cars started on a 1906 Mercedes 20/25 chassis found near his home in Herefordshire, where it had been used as the roof frame to build an air-raid shelter in 1942. A local vintage car owner unearthed the relic and Collings swapped some upholstery leather to get the chassis. The chassis was just that – no axles, gearbox, or other attached components.
Collings then obtained a 1916 Maybach Zeppelin engine from Keir Helberg in the United States. It was brand new, having been rescued after World War I by the United States Army Air Corps for its engine collection, and later owned by power-boat racer Gar Wood, but never used. The spark plug holes still contained the shipping plugs, but the magneto and carburetors were missing; new carbs were made and two Bosch magnetos obtained from Helberg. The engine is a 6-cylinder type HSLu of 19.085 liters’ displacement and generates nearly 300 horsepower at 1,400 rpm.
In Dépanoto, France, Collings found an enormous gearbox from an ancient chain-drive Delahaye, a Lorraine-Dietrich steering box and a Mercedes front axle. Sub-frames were constructed for both engine and gearbox to accommodate frame flexing, based on the design for Chitty IV. The chassis was shortened by about a foot to allow for trials runs and a Borg and Beck clutch installed as part of the flywheel. The radiator is a modified early Mercedes core with higher capacity and twin-shoe rear wheel brakes were installed. Once completed, the car was approved as an Edwardian special by the VSCC on the reasonable grounds that it contains period components and could have been constructed in the appropriate era, as were the Chittys of Zborowski.
The Maybach engine is surprisingly modern in many ways. It uses two Bosch ZH6 magnetos to fire two spark plugs per cylinder. The separate cylinders are machined from solid metal down to 3-mm wall thickness. Similar to the lightweight Mercedes engines used in planes and race cars from 1913 to the W196 Grand Prix cars of the mid-1950s, it has thin (1mm) sheet-steel water jackets.
The separate heads contain five overhead valves, two inlet and three exhaust. A dry-sump oiling system uses an eight-gallon tank and there are seven main crankshaft bearings. The compression ratio is 5.94:1, fairly high for the time. And a spare Mercedes 60 gas tank installed gives a range of about 60 miles from the fuel feed system of two carburetors – 4 miles per gallon!
At one of the first competitive events entered, the VSCC Shelsley Walsh hill climb, the engine’s 1,000 pound-feet of torque sheared off first and second gears at the start. Stronger gears, along with adding step-up epicyclic gearing between the clutch and gearbox, sorted out that problem. The car has done a quarter mile in just over 18 seconds and has done well in sprints, hill climbs and trials since 1993. In 1994, Collings won two of the most prestigious VSCC trophies for the car’s overall performance before selling the car to a German collector who now displays it at Sinsheim’s automobile and technology museum.
Building a period-correct, aero-engined Maybach Mercedes
Article and Photography Barry Patchett and others
While visiting the Auto & Technik Museum Sinsheim on the MBCA Germany tour this September, members may notice a massive old Mercedes race car, powered by a huge Maybach aero engine. The label identifies it as a “Brooklands race car,” which it is not, though it is similar to the record-breaking cars that were raced on that circuit in England in the early 1920s.
The car isn’t even really of that period. Here is the story: This racing car was built in the early 1990s by Roger Collings, one of the world’s foremost exponents of antique Mercedes racing cars, to race at Vintage Sports Car Club (VSCC) of Great Britain events. I remember it well, having watched it run when I was a VSCC marshal.
Collings began his vintage racing career in the 1960s, competing for many years with a 1903 Mercedes 60 in VSCC races, speed trials, hill climbs and rallies. In the early 1990s, he decided to construct a car to entertain spectators at VSCC events while having some fun himself. Although a Mercedes 60 has fearsome performance for a car constructed prior to 1904, he wanted something more challenging, so he became the chairman of the Aero-Engined Car Club and began looking for suitable transportation.
The racing and road cars constructed in the 1920s by Count Louis Zborowski inspired Collings. Zborowski’s wealthy father Eliot was killed racing a Mercedes in 1903 at the La Turbie hill climb in France and Zborowski’s mother, one of the Astor family, died in 1911 when he was 16, leaving Louis the family estate “Higham Park” in Kent, plus seven acres in Manhattan, including five blocks on Fifth Avenue – a fortune estimated at $55 million – and much more.
Suddenly the world’s fourth richest teenager, Zborowski promptly purchased a Gordon Watney-modified Mercedes sports car in London. Enlisting engineer Clive Gallop of subsequent Bentley fame, Zborowski then constructed four vehicles using airplane engines on Mercedes chassis. Because of their distinctive sounds, spectators referred to them by the nickname “Chitty Bang Bang.”
Chitty I was built in 1921 on a lengthened chain-driven Mercedes 75 chassis with a 6-cylinder 23-liter Maybach aero engine. Successfully raced at Brooklands, it was later bought and raced by the sons of Arthur Conan Doyle. Chitty II, also built in 1921, had a similar, but shorter Mercedes chassis with an 18.8-liter Benz series Bz IV aero engine. It was used primarily as a fast road car and is now on display in the Bahre Collection in Maine. It is sometimes referred to as “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” after the car in Ian Fleming’s book and the Walt Disney motion picture of the same name, though the only connection is that Fleming thought children would be amused by the sound of the nickname of Zborowsky’s cars.
Chitty III was based on a 28/95 Mercedes chassis fitted with a 6-cylinder, 14.8-liter Mercedes aero engine and was known as “The White Mercedes.” In 1924, Zborowski also started Chitty IV, the “Higham Special” (later known as “Babs”), a Liberty L12-engined land-speed-record car. It used a gearbox and chain drive from a 200-horsepower “Blitzen Benz.” Its next owner, John Parry-Thomas, was killed on the Pendine Sands in Wales when the power chain broke during a land-speed record attempt in 1927. The car was immediately and unceremoniously buried at the accident site, and only decades later exhumed and restored by Owen Wyn Owen. Chitty IV is now displayed alternately at the Brooklands Museum and Pendine Museum of Speed.
Collings’s tribute to these cars started on a 1906 Mercedes 20/25 chassis found near his home in Herefordshire, where it had been used as the roof frame to build an air-raid shelter in 1942. A local vintage car owner unearthed the relic and Collings swapped some upholstery leather to get the chassis. The chassis was just that – no axles, gearbox, or other attached components.
Collings then obtained a 1916 Maybach Zeppelin engine from Keir Helberg in the United States. It was brand new, having been rescued after World War I by the United States Army Air Corps for its engine collection, and later owned by power-boat racer Gar Wood, but never used. The spark plug holes still contained the shipping plugs, but the magneto and carburetors were missing; new carbs were made and two Bosch magnetos obtained from Helberg. The engine is a 6-cylinder type HSLu of 19.085 liters’ displacement and generates nearly 300 horsepower at 1,400 rpm.
In Dépanoto, France, Collings found an enormous gearbox from an ancient chain-drive Delahaye, a Lorraine-Dietrich steering box and a Mercedes front axle. Sub-frames were constructed for both engine and gearbox to accommodate frame flexing, based on the design for Chitty IV. The chassis was shortened by about a foot to allow for trials runs and a Borg and Beck clutch installed as part of the flywheel. The radiator is a modified early Mercedes core with higher capacity and twin-shoe rear wheel brakes were installed. Once completed, the car was approved as an Edwardian special by the VSCC on the reasonable grounds that it contains period components and could have been constructed in the appropriate era, as were the Chittys of Zborowski.
The Maybach engine is surprisingly modern in many ways. It uses two Bosch ZH6 magnetos to fire two spark plugs per cylinder. The separate cylinders are machined from solid metal down to 3-mm wall thickness. Similar to the lightweight Mercedes engines used in planes and race cars from 1913 to the W196 Grand Prix cars of the mid-1950s, it has thin (1mm) sheet-steel water jackets.
The separate heads contain five overhead valves, two inlet and three exhaust. A dry-sump oiling system uses an eight-gallon tank and there are seven main crankshaft bearings. The compression ratio is 5.94:1, fairly high for the time. And a spare Mercedes 60 gas tank installed gives a range of about 60 miles from the fuel feed system of two carburetors – 4 miles per gallon!
At one of the first competitive events entered, the VSCC Shelsley Walsh hill climb, the engine’s 1,000 pound-feet of torque sheared off first and second gears at the start. Stronger gears, along with adding step-up epicyclic gearing between the clutch and gearbox, sorted out that problem. The car has done a quarter mile in just over 18 seconds and has done well in sprints, hill climbs and trials since 1993. In 1994, Collings won two of the most prestigious VSCC trophies for the car’s overall performance before selling the car to a German collector who now displays it at Sinsheim’s automobile and technology museum.