The Crazy True Story Of The 1907 Motor Race

Publish date: 2024-05-02

On January 31, 1907, the idea for the Beijing-Paris Race (referred to as Peking-Paris at the time), first hit the Western imagination when the Paris newspaper Le Matin published a piece sneering at racetracks. According to "Race of the Century" by Julie Fenster, the piece noted that "The supreme use of the automobile is that it makes long journeys possible ... But all we have done is make it go round in circles." Instead, Le Matin proposed that "what needs to be proved is that as long as a man has a car he can do anything and go anywhere. Anywhere. Yes, anywhere," and they issued a challenge, asking "Is there anyone who will undertake to travel this summer from Paris to Peking by automobile?"

One of the first people to accept the challenge was French automobilist Marquis Jules-Albert de Dion, who would describe the event as a "real Jules Verne affair." Before long, race driver Auguste Pons also agreed to join, and the car company Contal agreed to sponsor him.

Early in the planning, the route of the journey was also changed from Paris to Beijing to run from Beijing to Paris instead. But initially, the journey was never meant to be a competitive race. Instead, it was called a raid, which is in French terminology, according to "Fenster," "not a race, but a sporting intrusion into foreign territory, intended only to see who could finish–not who would come in first."

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