Peking to Paris: The Ultimate Driving Adventure

Desert ... Mongolia ... Russian Steppes ... racing for a bottle of champagne.

The official record of the centennial re-enactment of a great motoring milestone: the 1907 Peking to Paris race. Man and machine against the elements, driving where no car has gone before ... that was the impossible challenge of 1907, when a handful of buccaneering madcap motorists took up the idea of a Paris newspaper to prove that the car could now go anywhere by driving the huge distance between two capital cities – Peking to Paris. To mark the 100th anniversary of the original Great Race, over 100 cars set out to drive the original route used by Prince Borghese in 1907. They ranged from authentic veteran Italas and vintage Bentleys to classic Aston Martins, and pretty much everything in-between. Drivers of 26 different nationalities came together to test their wits and their cars by driving 40 days from the Great Wall of China, across the Gobi Desert. After the Gobi came ten days of wilderness, crossing Mongolia's vast plains to Russia, then on to Moscows Red Square and St Petersburg, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Germany, the survivors finally rolling into Paris for an amazing party. Even though 100 years had passed since the first groundbreaking event, today's rally enthusiasts discovered that in Mongolia, conditions of poor fuel, problems of food and water, and finding the way to distant horizons remained a challenge exactly as faced by the original pioneers. This is the inside story of the great driving efforts and human endeavour required to complete an amazingly challenging route. With 250 photos, official maps and inside information, it is a fascinating read for any motor enthusiast. The book also briefly describes the original event, including previously unpublished photographs.