A matter of weeks after the finish of the Peking to Paris race, Le Matin joined forces with the New York Times to announce another motoring marathon, one which would encircle the globe from New York to Paris. To put it mildly, the planned route was ambitious, incorporating a winter overland journey through western Canada and Alaska, followed by a trip across the ice of the Bering Straits to Russia! The Motor dismissed the whole idea as ‘mad-brained’. Not surprisingly, one or two revisions had to be made once the event was under way.
Seven cars were due to start, but an Itala was withdrawn at the last minute when it emerged that the race organisers were going to handicap its time by the small matter of a week, presumably on account of the company’s success in the Peking-Paris jaunt. As it was, six vehicles lined up outside the New York Times offices in Times Square. There were French cars – a Motobloc (driven by Peking-Paris survivor Charles Godard), a De Dion-Bouton and a Sizaire-Naudin; an Italian Züst, driven by Antonio Scarfoglio, poet, writer and son of a Naples newspaper publisher; the American Thomas Flyer, piloted by George Schuster; and a German Protos, entered in the name of the Kaiser and driven by Lt Hans Koeppen of the 15th Prussian infantry. The Kaiser had sent a special greeting to the German team. A crowd of over 250,000 New Yorkers watched the cars set off amid flying champagne corks and much waving of national flags. In readiness for the gruelling journey which lay ahead, each vehicle carried spare parts, shovels, sails, skis, food and, just in case, firearms.
If the competitors were expecting a comparatively trouble-free ride until they hit Alaska, they were sorely mistaken. For the worst weather in the whole race was reserved for New York State. Thick snow and mud rendered roads impassable, prompting the unscrupulous Godard to put the Motobloc on a train, a deed which resulted in his instant disqualification. The Sizaire-Naudin also dropped out shortly afterwards with a broken back axle. The remaining four ploughed west but, after three weeks of motoring, they had only got as far as Chicago. The intention had been to ship the cars to Alaska from Seattle on 10 March but the snow had completely disrupted the timetable. With its American factory able to provide the best service for this section of the race, the Thomas Flyer led the way across the Midwest. When the car became stuck in deep mud in Nebraska, local farmers dug it out. Worse was to follow in Wyoming, when the three-man crew found the route blocked by snow and were obliged to drive along 45 miles (72.4km) of railroad track from Carter to Evanston. This would subsequently be used in evidence against them.
The Thomas arrived in San Francisco on 24 March and four days later Schuster set sail for Alaska. Once there, it quickly became apparent that the Arctic crossing was a non-starter and so he began to retrace his steps, only to discover that the Protos, having been bogged down in the Wyoming mud, had travelled from Ogden, Utah, by train to Seattle and caught a ship to Russia. Meanwhile the De Dion and the Züst had boarded a boat to Japan. In a panic, Le Matin suddenly announced that the great slog across America had been to no avail since the race was now going to be restarted from Vladivostok! As a concession to the efforts of the Thomas crew in actually reaching Alaska, it was granted a 22-day bonus which allowed it to catch up with the others. Conversely, the Protos was penalised for 30 days for travelling by train. The entire event was degenerating into a shambles, attracting scorn from motoring publications. The Autocar – as the magazine was known in those days – commented: ‘Seeing that the organisers are endeavouring to simplify the race as much as possible, it may be suggested whether, after all, it would not have been more satisfactory to ship the cars from New York to Le Havre, and then proceed by road to Paris.’
The crossing to Japan passed without incident and when Schuster arrived at the Maibara Inn in a rural region of the country, it was recorded as being the first time that a motor car had ever been seen there. After negotiating the dirt tracks of Japan, the three cars were loaded on to another ship bound for Vladivostok where they met up with the Protos. However, in protest at the rail journeys made by both the Thomas and the Protos, the De Dion was withdrawn on the orders of the Count himself, leaving just three cars to set off from Vladivostok at the restart on 22 May.
The Thomas again set the pace, albeit at a sloth-like 10 miles (16.1km) per day as it struggled through the boggy conditions. Following the tracks of the Peking-Paris pioneers, it then took to the line of the Trans-Siberian Railway until the gearbox broke, allowing the Protos to seize the initiative. In the meantime the Züst crew were nearly drowned on what they thought was dry land, and on another occasion they improvised a new crankshaft bearing from a cough sweet tin, some mud, some pieces of wood, and a quantity of bullets. As the race entered Europe, Le Matin panicked again, this time at the prospect of a German car, the Protos, being the first to reach Paris. So the newspaper changed the rules, altering the Protos’s finishing point to Berlin. The Züst was to proceed to Paris, as planned, while the Thomas Flyer was ordered to make its way back to New York via transatlantic shipping. Fortunately nobody paid any attention to Le Matin’s instructions and the Protos drove on to Paris, arriving there on the night of 30 July to what one observer described as an ‘embarrassed silence’. Four days later, having covered 13,341 miles (21,470km) in 169 days, the Thomas car reached Paris to a triumphant welcome and an immediate declaration of victory. It was now that the fun really started, with all three cars claiming victory.
Schuster was certain that he was the winner because, despite finishing four days behind the Protos, he thought the German car had incurred a 30-day penalty. There was also the small matter of the Protos missing out Japan completely. The Germans responded by accusing the Americans of having themselves travelled by rail across Wyoming. Then there was the Züst team. They didn’t arrive in Paris for another two months, having been delayed at Omsk where the crew were seized as spies when they tried to send a cable in Italian. On eventually reaching France, they immediately claimed victory as theirs, insisting that the other two had cheated.
When all the fuss had died down, the organisers confirmed the Thomas Flyer as the winner. The race provided a massive boost to the US motor industry with sales of the Thomas jumping by 27 per cent. George Schuster became a national celebrity. Fate was less kind to the Züst. With eerie echoes of the fate of the victorious Itala from the Peking-Paris event, this latest Italian model was taken to England after the race, only to be destroyed by fire at a railway station.