Peking to Paris

The Peking to Paris motor race was an

(then the Third French Republic), a distance of 14,994 kilometres (9,317 mi).

The idea for the race came from a challenge published in the Paris newspaper Le Matin on 31 January 1907, reading:

"What needs to be proved today is that as long as a man has a car, he can do anything and go anywhere. Is there anyone who will undertake to travel this summer from Paris to Peking by automobile?"

Eventually the race started from the French embassy in Peking on 10 June 1907. The winner, Prince Scipione Borghese, arrived in Paris on 10 August 1907.^[1]

1907 teams

There were forty entrants in the race, but only five teams ended up going ahead with shipping the cars to Peking. The race was held despite the race committee cancelling the race.

• Itala, Italian, 7 litre engine, finished 1st, driven by Prince Scipione Borghese and Ettore Guizzardi
• Spyker, Dutch, finished 2nd, driven by Charles Godard with Jean du Taillis
• Contal, French, did not finish, three-wheeler Cyclecar, driven by Auguste Pons
• DeDion 1, French, finished 3rd, driven by Georges Cormier
• DeDion 2, French, finished 4th, driven by Victor Collignon

The 1907 race

There were no rules in the race, except that the first car to Paris would win the prize of a

route, so that the race was well covered in newspapers at the time. Each car had one journalist as a passenger, with the journalists sending stories from the telegraph stations regularly throughout the race.

The race was held during a time when cars were fairly new and the route traversed remote areas of

Second in the race was Charles Godard in the Spyker; he had no money, had to ask others for petrol, and borrowed his car for the race. He was arrested for fraud near the end of the race. Some of the other cars had difficulties in going up ravines, across mud, quicksand, and bridges across rivers not designed for vehicles. The Contal cyclecar became bogged down in the

filled with hundreds of pictures.

Re-enactments

Several races have been held to re-enact the event, including the

] to race.

1960

In 1960, the French film director Dino Delaurentiss intended to compose a film about the historic race starring Golden Globe winning American actor Earl Holliman, who was living in Paris at the time, to appear in one of the leading roles.^[4] However, it never materialized.

1990

In 1990 the

was held, which raced in the opposite direction to the original race, from London to Beijing.

1997

In 1997 there was "The Second Peking to Paris Motor Challenge", consisting of 94 vintage cars, which took a more southerly route through Tibet, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, and Italy. It was won by the British pair Phil Surtees and John Bayliss, driving a 1942 Willys Jeep.

2005

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On 18 April 2005 a 1973

).

On 15 May 2005 five cars led by Lang Kidby departed Beijing for Paris, retracing the original route with very similar cars to the originals; a 1907

Krasnojarsk

, Russia.

2007

In 2007 the Endurance Rally Association staged a rally to celebrate the centenary of the original 1907 race. Unlike the 1997 event, also staged by Philip Young, which took a southerly route, this event followed more faithfully the route taken by Prince Borghese in 1907 in the winning Itala. From Beijing, competitors went north to the Mongolian border at

to finish in Paris. 126 veteran, vintage, and classic cars took part, the oldest being a 1903 Mercedes. The major challenge of the rally proved to be Mongolia and the Gobi desert with no conventional roads, merely rutted tracks at best. Despite this 106 crossed the finishing line. The rally covered 12642 km in 36 days.^[5]

2013

The fifth race started at Beijing on 28 May 2013.^[6] It was for vintage cars and was to last 33 days. In the third week, the race was marred by the death of a British participant, 46-year-old mother-of-two Emma Wilkinson, in a head-on collision with a vehicle unconnected with the event.^[7]

Monuments

In 2015, commissioned by Pirelli Kirov Tyre Plant, a monument to the Borghese's Itala was erected in Kirov, Russia.^[8] The monument commemorates the fact of Borghese's team making a stopover in Vyatka Governorate. The monument was created by the designer Elena Gurina and the blacksmith Eduard Gurin.^[9]

See also

• Endurance racing (motorsport)

Bibliography

• Barzini, Luigi (1907). Pekin to Paris: an account of Prince Borgheseʹs journey across two continents in a motor-car. Translated by de Castelvecchio, L. P. London: E. Grant Richards.
• The Mad Motorists- The Great Peking to Paris Race of '07 by Allen Andrews (1965) J B Lippincott Co. ASIN: B0006BLYX0
• Peking to Paris - The Ultimate Driving Adventure - Veloce Publishing
• The Great Peking to Paris Expedition - Harper Collins - 2005
  ISBN 0-7322-8253-5
• Due mondi visti da un'Alfa - Nada editore

References

External links

• The Peking To Paris Motor Challenge - 2007
• Popular Mechanics The Great Race
• ABC tv Peking to Paris
• www.pekingparismorgan.com
• From Peking to Paris with Anadol - Ahmet Ongun & Erdal ≠Tokcan - 2010
• Hold on, old sport! - The Peking to Paris Motor Challenge on the roads of Siberia: Novosibirsk — Omsk - 2013