Ian Fleming - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

“Well, there she is,” said the garage man sadly. “She once knew every racing track in Europe. In the old days, there wasn’t a famous driver in Britain who hadn’t driven her at one time or another. She’s still wearing England’s racing green, as you can see—that was from early in the thirties.

“She’s a twelve-cylinder, eight-liter, supercharged Paragon Panther . They only made one of them and then the firm went broke. This is the only one in the world. Doesn’t look like much, does she? I’m afraid she’s due for the scrap heap. Can’t afford to go on giving her living space. They’re coming to tow her away next week, as a matter of fact—take her to the dump, pick her up in a big grab and drop her between one of those giant hydraulic presses. One crunch and it just squashes them into a sort of square metal biscuit. Then she’ll go to a smelting works to be melted down just for the raw metal. Seems a shame, doesn’t it? You can almost see from her eyes—those big Marchal racing headlights—that she knows what’s in store for her. But there it is. You can see the shape she’s in and it would need hundreds of pounds to get her on the road again—even supposing there was someone nowadays who could afford to run her.”

Commander Pott was looking curiously excited. “Mind if I look her over?”

“Go ahead.” The garage man shook his head sadly. “She’d appreciate a last look over by someone like you who knows what real quality used to be.”

The whole family picked their way over and through the patches of oily ground. While Commander Pott looked under the hood, Mimsie and Jeremy and Jemima prodded the once-beautiful soft leather upholstery (moths flew out!); and looked under the carpets, front and back (beetles scuttled about!); and examined the knobs and switches and dials on the dashboard (there were dozens of them, all rusty and mildewed); and tried the big old boa-constrictor horn that worked with an India-rubber bulb. But nothing happened except that a lot of dust blew out of the end into Commander Pott’s face as he bent over the engine, peering and tinkering.

The children looked at Mimsie and Mimsie looked back at them and do you know what? They didn’t just dolefully shake their heads at each other. They all had the same look in their eyes. The look said, “This must once have been the most beautiful car in the world. If the engine’s more or less all right, and if we all set to and scrubbed and painted and mended and polished, do you suppose we could put her back as she used to be? It wouldn’t be like having just one of those black beetles that the factories turn out in hundreds and thousands and that all look alike. We’d have a real jewel of a car, something to love and cherish and look after as if it were one of the family!”

Commander Pott took his face out from under the hood. He looked at them and they looked back at him and he just turned to the garage man and said, “I’ll buy her. We all love her and we’ll make her as good as new. How much do you want for her?”

“Fifty pounds,” said the garage man. “She wouldn’t fetch much as scrap.”

Commander Pott counted out the notes there and then, and said, “Thank you, and will you please have her towed along to my workshop just as soon as you can.”

And do you know? There were almost tears of happiness in the garage man’s eyes as he shook them all by the hand. As they climbed into their taxi to go off home, he said seriously, “Commander Pott, Mrs. Pott, Master Pott, and Miss Pott, you will never regret buying that car. She’s going to give you the time of your lives. You’ve saved her from the scrap heap, and I’ll eat my hat—if I had a hat to eat—if she doesn’t repay you for what you’ve done today.” He was still waving happily after them when they drove out of sight.

As they bowled along in their taxi, Jemima whispered to Jeremy in the front seat next to the driver, “Jeremy, did you notice something very mysterious about the old license plate that was hanging from the back of our car?”

“There was nothing mysterious about it,” said Jeremy scornfully, “it was GEN ELEVEN.”

“Yes,” said Jemima excitedly. “GEN II. Don’t you realize what that spells? ‘Genii’—like magical people, sort of spirits, like that story about the Bottle Imp by Robert Louis Stevenson that Mimsie read to us once.

“Hum!” said Jeremy thoughtfully. “Hum! Hum! Hum!” and they sat silently thinking this odd coincidence over, until they got home.

Well, the next day Jeremy and Jemima had to go off to boarding school so they never saw the arrival of the new car, or rather the ruins of it, as it came bumping and crashing down the lane behind the tow truck, but Mimsie wrote and told them of how it disappeared at once into Commander Pott’s workshop and how their father then locked himself inside with it and only emerged to eat and sleep.

For three months, the whole of the summer term, he worked and worked secretly on the wreck of the old Paragon and Mimsie said that much smoke came out of the chimney and often lights shone all night through the windows, and mysterious packages arrived from engineering factories all over England and disappeared into the workshop through the locked doors.

Mimsie wrote that their father went through periods of gloom and impatience and frenzy and triumph and dejection and delight and unhappiness and nightmares and loss of appetite, but that gradually, with the passing weeks, he became calmer and happier until, as the holidays came nearer, he was smiling and rubbing his hands. Then at last came the great day when they fetched Jeremy and Jemima from school and the whole family assembled outside the workshop while Commander Pott solemnly unlocked the doors and they all trooped in to where the twelve-cylinder, eight-liter, supercharged Paragon Panther stood under the bright lights.

Mimsie and Jeremy and Jemima stood and stared and stared and stared until Jemima broke the silence and said, “But she’s the most beautiful car in the world!” Mimsie and Jeremy just nodded their agreement and looked at the Paragon with round and shining eyes.

And she was beautiful. Every single little thing had been put right and every detail gleamed and glinted with new paint and polished chrome down to the snarling mouth of the big boa-constrictor horn.

Slowly they walked around her and examined her inch by inch: from the rows and rows of gleaming knobs on the dashboard to the brand-new, dark-red leather upholstery; from the cream-colored collapsible roof to the fine new tires; from the glistening silver of the huge exhaust pipes snaking away from the holes in the bright green hood to the glittering license plates that said GEN II.

And silently they climbed in through the low doors that opened and shut with the most delicious clicks, and Commander Caractacus Pott sat behind the huge steering wheel with Mimsie beside him in her own bucket seat with an armrest, and Jeremy and Jemima got in the back and sank down in the big, soft, red leather cushions and rested their arms on their own armrest between them.

Then, without saying anything, Commander Pott leaned forward and pressed the big black knob of the self-starter.

At first nothing happened. There was just the soft grinding from the starter motor. Jeremy and Jemima looked at each other with round eyes. Wasn’t she going to work after all?

But then Commander Pott pulled out the silver knob of the choke, to feed more gas into the carburetor, and pressed the starter again. And out of the exhaust pipes there came just these four noises—very loudly—

And there was a distinct pause between each noise, and it was like two big sneezes and two small explosions. And then there was silence.