FROM PEKING TO PARIS
Growing up, I’d see old magazines, usually in the dentist’s and doctor’s waiting rooms, that told of great adventures in the early days of motoring. Drivers with names like Lord Percy d’brain Damargee would drive from places like the Horn of Africa to West Bromwich. There were headlines like “Across Australia in an Austin Ruby by Cloive and Sheree Adelaide Smith.” Fascinating stuff to fill a schoolboy’s head. Featuring a brave and daft bunch of car nuts.
But in 1907, a French newspaper offered a prize for a race from Peking to Paris. That’s 9,500 miles. And you’ve got to remember there weren’t any roads worth motoring on once you got out of Germany. They actually got five entrants—not many, I admit, but there were only about fifty cars in the whole world then.
One of the entrants was Count Borghese, an Italian “count” who would drive the huge Itala. Think of the stuff you’d have to pack: goggles; gloves; a waterproof coat; one box of underpants; a year’s supply of oil from Mesopotamia; food; guns so you could shoot more food; beads for the natives; camera and tripod; and film the size of a New York sandwich. I mean, this was 1907. Everything was in its infancy. They had to cross mountains, deserts, bloody Siberia—and you can only imagine what the locals must have thought when they saw these exotic beasts coming through.
Count Borghese had a secret plan, though. He took his chauffeur and a journalist. I hope the chauffeur didn’t do all the driving, but the journalist did write it all down and took the photographs. These guys were real pioneers. It took some balls to dodge bandits and dodgy tribes just to race a car. The count came first, and it took him two months. The man who came second didn’t arrive for another two and a half weeks. Forza Borghese!