I used to confuse this 1968 movie with The Absent-Minded Professor, which also had a flying car of sorts – but in that Disney movie, that vehicle went airborne due to the chemical discovery of Flubber. In this Disney movie musical, starring Dick Van Dyke, the car that provides the movie’s onomatopoeia title is a lot fancier and gimmick-prone than that. It’s sort of like a James Bond supercar, which only makes sense: This musical, which came to theaters a few years after Goldfinger, is based on a children’s book by Ian Fleming, author of all those 007 adventures. (In addition to his fascination with tricked-out cars, Fleming also displays his female name play here: the author, whose shapely Bond girl characters were given such names as Plenty O’Toole and Pussy Galore, in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang christens his heroine (played by Sally Ann Howes) with the name Truly Scrumptious. And here’s another surprise: One of the screenplay’s authors is Roald Dahl, the classically twisted writer whose works include, among many others, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Matilda, The Witches, and the classic “Lamb to the Slaughter” and “Man from the South” episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.