Louis Zborowski

Count Louis Vorow Zborowski (20 February 1895 – 19 October 1924) was an English racing driver and automobile engineer.

His father, William Eliot Morris Zborowski (1858–1903) was also a racing driver, and died in a racing crash, in 1903 at La Turbie Hillclimb in Nice, France. His mother was a wealthy American heiress, born Margaret Laura Astor Carey (1853–1911), a granddaughter of William Backhouse Astor, Sr. and Margaret Rebecca Armstrong of the prominent Astor family. She had been Madame de Stuers before her divorce and marriage in 1892 to Eliot Zborowski.

After the death of his father in 1903, in 1910 his mother bought the Higham Park estate at Bridge near Canterbury in Kent. Paying £17,500 to the executors of the estate of London banker William Gay, the sale included a farm, 225 acres (91 ha) and twelve houses. Mrs. Zborowski immediately commissioned a £50,000 refurbishment of the house from the architect Joseph Sawyer.

On her death in 1911, 16-year-old Louis instantly became the fourth richest under-21-year-old in the world, with cash of £11 million and real estate in the United States, including 7 acres (2.8 ha) of Manhattan and several blocks on Fifth Avenue, New York.

Zborowski's career as an amateur racing driver encompassed a wide experience of marques and events. He was an early patron of Aston Martin, and raced for them at Brooklands and in the 1923 French Grand Prix. In 1921 Zborowski was to drive one of the 1921 Grand Prix Sunbeams representing Britain at Le Mans but this did not transpire and instead he raced the car at the International Shelsley Walsh - England’s foremost Speed Hill-Climb.

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