{"id":7285,"date":"2016-03-18T11:35:20","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T18:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=7285"},"modified":"2016-03-22T11:39:20","modified_gmt":"2016-03-22T18:39:20","slug":"dude-builds-chitty-chitty-bang-bang-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2016\/03\/18\/dude-builds-chitty-chitty-bang-bang-car\/","title":{"rendered":"Dude Builds Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Car"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/03\/19\/nyregion\/sgt-pepper-builds-a-real-life-chitty-chitty-bang-bang-on-long-island.html\" target=\"_blank\">from The New York Times<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<h1>Sgt. Pepper Builds a Real-Life Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on Long Island<\/h1>\n<p>By <a title=\"More Articles by COREY KILGANNON\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/people\/k\/corey_kilgannon\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span class=\"byline-author\" data-byline-name=\"COREY KILGANNON\" data-twitter-handle=\"coreykilgannon\">COREY KILGANNON<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2016\/03\/19\/nyregion\/19CHITTY1\/19CHITTY1-master675.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"auto\" \/><em>Tony Garofalo at home on Long Island with his Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He built it as a tribute to his mother, with whom he saw the film premiere in 1968. Credit: Heather Walsh for The New York Times<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It is a well-known story: A quirky tinkerer rolls a rusted old car into his workshop, casts around for some parts, and emerges \u2014 honk, honk! \u2014 with a magical motorcar.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, that\u2019s the famous plot of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZTTzcXSLjhI\" target=\"_blank\">Chitty Chitty Bang Bang<\/a>,\u201d but it is also the story of Tony Garofalo, 51, a retired New York City Police Department sergeant who has made his own version of the famous car whipped up by Caractacus Potts, the quirky inventor played by Dick Van Dyke in the popular 1968 British movie.<\/p>\n<p>While Mr. Potts put his fine, four-fendered contraption together in no time in a shop in rural England, Mr. Garofalo tinkered inside the small garage at his Long Island home for five years and spent more than $100,000 set aside for his retirement, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the movie, he came out in a few days with a shiny new car,\u201d Mr. Garofalo said. \u201cWell, I found out quickly that that was only a movie. For me, it took a lot of hours, a lot of money and a lot of dreaming.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Last summer he finally finished transforming a 1914 coupe he found in a New Jersey junkyard into a spit and image of the beloved film car \u2014 registered, insured and legal to drive on the street, with seatbelts and valid license plates from 1914.<\/p>\n<p>On Friday, the car will take its most public stage at the entrance of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center as part of the 2016 <a class=\"meta-classifier\" title=\"More articles about the New York International Auto Show.\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/subjects\/n\/new_york_auto_show\/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier\" target=\"_blank\">New York International Auto Show<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>[ <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/03\/19\/nyregion\/sgt-pepper-builds-a-real-life-chitty-chitty-bang-bang-on-long-island.html\" target=\"_blank\">click to continue reading at NYT<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from The New York Times Sgt. Pepper Builds a Real-Life Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on Long Island By COREY KILGANNON Tony Garofalo at home on Long Island with his Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He built it as a tribute to his mother, with whom he saw the film premiere in 1968. Credit: Heather Walsh for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}