Zborowski was born in London in 1895 to American parents who had relocated to England nine years earlier. His father Elliott Zborowski was himself a racing driver who died in a crash at the La Turbie Hillclimb in Nice in 1903. His mother, Margaret Laura Astor Carey, was a wealthy American heiress descended from the prominent Astor family. Following his father's death, Zborowski assumed the title of "Count," which his father had adopted upon arriving in England — a style with no confirmed legitimate heraldic basis.
Upon his mother's death in 1911, the sixteen-year-old Zborowski became one of the wealthiest young men in the world, with cash assets of approximately £11 million and extensive real estate including property in Manhattan and on Fifth Avenue, New York. His family's estate at Higham Park, Bridge, near Canterbury in Kent, became the base of operations for his engineering ambitions.
Zborowski designed and built four aero-engined racing cars at workshops attached to Higham Park, assisted by engineer and co-driver Captain Clive Gallop. Gallop provided the technical expertise for chassis and mechanical systems, while the coachwork was supplied by Bligh Brothers of Canterbury, a firm Zborowski eventually acquired outright to maintain a permanent personal staff of coachbuilders.
The first car was powered by a 23,093 cc six-cylinder Maybach aero engine and was called "Chitty Bang Bang." A second used an 18,825 cc Benz aero engine. A third, nicknamed the "White Mercedes," was built on a Mercedes 28/95 chassis fitted with a 14,778 cc six-cylinder Mercedes aero engine. These cars competed with some success at Brooklands.
The fourth car, built at Higham Park with a 27-litre American Liberty aero engine, was called the "Higham Special." After Zborowski's death it was purchased by J.G. Parry-Thomas, who improved it, renamed it "Babs," and used it to set a land speed record of over 170 mph at Pendine Sands in April 1926. Parry-Thomas was killed in a subsequent attempt at the same location in 1927. Babs has been restored and is displayed at the Pendine Sands Museum of Speed and Brooklands Museum.
Zborowski was a versatile competitor across many types of events. He was an early patron of Aston Martin, racing for the marque at Brooklands and in the 1922 French Grand Prix. In 1923 he competed in the Indianapolis 500 driving a Bugatti, and also drove in the 1923 Italian Grand Prix at Monza in an American Miller 122, a single-seater designed by engineer Harry Miller.
He joined the Mercedes team in 1924. On 19 October 1924, while competing in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, his car skidded on a corner, turned over twice, and he was killed. He was 29 years old.
Zborowski was a passionate railway enthusiast. A 15-inch gauge circuit, the Higham Railway, was built around his estate, and this project — along with his friendship with Captain J.E.P. Howey — provided the impetus for the construction of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway in Kent, a 14-mile passenger-carrying line that survives as a popular attraction today. Zborowski had ordered the first locomotives for the project from Davey Paxman and Co.; Howey continued the undertaking after his death.
Ian Fleming had watched Zborowski race at Brooklands as a schoolboy and later visited Higham Park as a guest of its subsequent owner. Fleming drew on the romance of Zborowski's exploits when writing Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and in the third book Zborowski appears as a major character. In 2024, to mark the centenary of his death, Aston Martin arranged for apprentices to repaint the railings on the Zborowski family grave in British Racing Green, and the first two Aston Martin Grand Prix cars — both funded and raced by Zborowski — were displayed at the graveside at a service of remembrance.