The World’s First Intercontinental Road Race
Automobile racing has become a popular sport. Both professional and amateurs battle it out on carefully designed courses with highly tuned vehicles. Street racing today is illegal in most places and highly dangerous at any time. Road rallies have largely replaced street racing, allowing entrants to drive their own unenhanced vehicles and focusing more on skill than speed. Whether or not you race or rally with your Certified Mercedes, you may be interested in this story that I recently ran across at The Museum of Unnatural Mystery. It details the world’s first intercontinental road race. Today we will take a look at the setting and the brave drivers who made this phenomenal bit of history possible.
The Setting
The year was 1907. Automobiles were only 20 years old, and many predicted that they were just toys for the rich, incapable of replacing the horse as a mainstay of transportation. The editor of the French newspaper Le Martin was eager to prove the naysayers wrong. He issued a challenge: Was anyone brave enough to travel by automobile over 10,000 miles from Paris to Peking, the capital of China, in an automobile? At the time, the challenge was not meant to imply a race, merely to encourage some brave soul to prove the possibilities of the automobile. It was unknown whether anyone would be foolhardy enough to volunteer.
The Drivers
Remarkably, eleven men stepped up to the challenge, driving a total of five cars between them. The proffered vehicles ranged in size and power from a tiny 6 hp, three-wheeled Contal to the 40 hp Itala driven by Prince Scipio Borghese of Italy. The challenge had become a race. It was decided to drive the course in reverse, beginning in Peking and ending in Paris, in an effort to avoid monsoon season.
Each racer approached the challenge in very different ways. At that time, there were no roads throughout much of the course. Prince Borghese decided to take a 300 mile horseback journey in preparation, carrying a bamboo pole the width of his vehicle. When he discovered places that were too narrow for the car, he arranged to have them cleared. He also set up stores of extra fuel and spare parts along the route.
In marked contrast was Charles Godard, who entered a 15 hp Spyker. He took a cavalier approach, even going so far as to sell off most of his spare parts to pay for his trip to Peking.
The race began on June 10, 1907. On Monday, we will take a look at the historic events of that race, on which Murphy’s law was clearly in effect.
Filed Under: Certified Mercedes-Benz
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