Peking to Paris Motor Challenge 2007
An introduction

This is the Preface, by Michel Corday, from our English translation of Cormier’s 1907 account – The Race, Pekin Paris. It is as equally accurate today as it was 100 years ago – Man's sense of adventure is timeless.

In 1907 five teams of intrepid motorists embarked upon the most gruelling motor challenge at that time – to drive their cars in a run from Peking to Paris. It was over eight thousand miles long, crossing two largely roadless continents and lasting eighty days - Figures alone can not do this journey justice. Indeed it is probably the most heroic adventure in the history of the motor car. Nothing like it had ever been accomplished before and no contests so extraordinary have been held since or indeed can ever be held again. The experts said the thing was impossible, because it had never been done before. Men and cars proved them wrong.

When the challenge was first announced by the popular newspaper Le Matin in Paris, - the proposal was laughed at by most of the experts and the motoring press as both impossible and ridiculous. Nevertheless, on 10th June, 1907, five pioneering motorists answered the call for what was the longest, most brutal auto race to date. What unfolded was a story too incredible to be fiction. Their routes lay across China, Mongolia, Siberia, Russia, Poland, and Germany into France, almost all of it entirely roadless even by 1907 standards. Much of it passing over mountain ranges and trackless deserts was completely unknown. In parts there were rugged tracks made by pack animals but these were often flooded or feet deep in mud: in parts there was nothing but uncharted waste. The cars lacked even such basic amenities such as roofs and front brakes - but four of the five crews finally arrived in Paris, having overcome every conceivable hazard of intense cold and blazing heat, of mountain passes and bridgeless rivers, of desert, sand and snow. It is a story to make the most ardent trial enthusiast shudder.

One hundred years on, 2007, and 133 cars are taking part in a re-enactment of this run - eighteen are pre-1921 including a 1903 Mercedes and two 1907 Italas. It is still a story to make the most ardent trial enthusiast shudder!

A personal statement from Tim Scott.