Locals look at an Itala car in the courtyard of a caravanserai
From Beijing to Paris in 60 days
The French newspaper Le Matin published the following lines in January 1907:
“We need to prove that as long as a person has a car, they can do anything and get anywhere they want. Will anyone dare to drive from Beijing to Paris by car this summer?”
This was a real challenge for all motorists. Forty crews registered to participate, but only 5 of them were able to deliver their cars to Beijing. And some of these adventurers even made it to the finish line. The race started on June 10, 1907 from the French Embassy in Beijing.
The 15,000 km long route ran through remote regions of Asia — China and Russia. Local residents in those parts had never seen motorized vehicles, and there were almost no roads. For example, until 1907, traffic between Beijing and Lake Baikal was carried out only by horse transport.
The route was laid along telegraph lines, which provided press coverage of the race: each car had a journalist as a passenger who regularly sent materials about the race through telegraph stations along the route. Cars were stuck in mud and sand, could not overcome ravines and fell off shaky bridges; they had to be constantly repaired.
One of the race participants was Scipione Borghese, an Italian aristocrat who was driving an Itala, accompanied by mechanic Ettore Guizzardi and Luigi Barzini, a correspondent for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. When Borghese and his satellites reached the eastern shore of Lake Baikal, it became clear that they would not be able to go any further. The Siberian Governor-General came to the rescue and allowed the Circum-Baikal Railway to be used for the race. “The sleepers were buried in the mound, not protruding above it, so we had a fairly flat surface,” correspondent Luigi Barzini wrote in his book From Beijing to Paris in 60 Days. “The gorgeous, flat road was full of seductive charm after all the slopes, bushes and ditches. Towering above the landscape, it gave the impression of a suspension road, a huge suspension bridge. Only sleep-width bridges without any fences were slightly frightening.”
Once again, skipping the train, the travelers left the railway track and traveled several kilometers along the old Siberian Highway, where an old wooden bridge broke down under Itala. It was a miracle that they survived, Luigi Barzinis granddaughter Ludina Barzini wrote in 2021. “My grandfather was trapped between luggage and bent beams, and Borghese hung between the beams and the engine. But they did it: local residents helped to pull the car out and the rally continued.”
What was the situation with refueling and maintenance? In China and Mongolia, gasoline and oil were distributed to several points; for the route through Siberia, fuel was supplied across Russia from St. Petersburg. A warehouse for spare parts, including wheels and suspension springs, was organized in Omsk. After Irkutsk, tires were waiting for participants every thousand kilometers.
The race was won by Scipione Borghese, who reached the finish line in two months. Charles Goddard of France arrived second, where he was immediately arrested by the police for fraud — on the way he collected debts, posing as a Spyker factory racer.
In the photo, locals look at an Itala car in the courtyard of a caravanserai in the Chinese countryside, June 1907. Luigi Barzini later wrote: “A crowd of people gathered around the car, stubbornly looking for the beast. We realized that Chinese peasants explain incomprehensible phenomena in a logical way: by imagining a sled animal. The smartest people thought that this was not about a horse, but about some unknown fantastic animal that we had caught. When they heard the horns hoarse beep, they said, “This is his voice.”
Previously in Old Photos: The solar eclipse of 1900, Kalmyk in closed Tibet.
The French newspaper Le Matin published the following lines in January 1907:
“We need to prove that as long as a person has a car, they can do anything and get anywhere they want. Will anyone dare to drive from Beijing to Paris by car this summer?”
This was a real challenge for all motorists. Forty crews registered to participate, but only 5 of them were able to deliver their cars to Beijing. And some of these adventurers even made it to the finish line. The race started on June 10, 1907 from the French Embassy in Beijing.
The 15,000 km long route ran through remote regions of Asia — China and Russia. Local residents in those parts had never seen motorized vehicles, and there were almost no roads. For example, until 1907, traffic between Beijing and Lake Baikal was carried out only by horse transport.
The route was laid along telegraph lines, which provided press coverage of the race: each car had a journalist as a passenger who regularly sent materials about the race through telegraph stations along the route. Cars were stuck in mud and sand, could not overcome ravines and fell off shaky bridges; they had to be constantly repaired.
One of the race participants was Scipione Borghese, an Italian aristocrat who was driving an Itala, accompanied by mechanic Ettore Guizzardi and Luigi Barzini, a correspondent for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. When Borghese and his satellites reached the eastern shore of Lake Baikal, it became clear that they would not be able to go any further. The Siberian Governor-General came to the rescue and allowed the Circum-Baikal Railway to be used for the race. “The sleepers were buried in the mound, not protruding above it, so we had a fairly flat surface,” correspondent Luigi Barzini wrote in his book From Beijing to Paris in 60 Days. “The gorgeous, flat road was full of seductive charm after all the slopes, bushes and ditches. Towering above the landscape, it gave the impression of a suspension road, a huge suspension bridge. Only sleep-width bridges without any fences were slightly frightening.”
Once again, skipping the train, the travelers left the railway track and traveled several kilometers along the old Siberian Highway, where an old wooden bridge broke down under Itala. It was a miracle that they survived, Luigi Barzinis granddaughter Ludina Barzini wrote in 2021. “My grandfather was trapped between luggage and bent beams, and Borghese hung between the beams and the engine. But they did it: local residents helped to pull the car out and the rally continued.”
What was the situation with refueling and maintenance? In China and Mongolia, gasoline and oil were distributed to several points; for the route through Siberia, fuel was supplied across Russia from St. Petersburg. A warehouse for spare parts, including wheels and suspension springs, was organized in Omsk. After Irkutsk, tires were waiting for participants every thousand kilometers.
The race was won by Scipione Borghese, who reached the finish line in two months. Charles Goddard of France arrived second, where he was immediately arrested by the police for fraud — on the way he collected debts, posing as a Spyker factory racer.
In the photo, locals look at an Itala car in the courtyard of a caravanserai in the Chinese countryside, June 1907. Luigi Barzini later wrote: “A crowd of people gathered around the car, stubbornly looking for the beast. We realized that Chinese peasants explain incomprehensible phenomena in a logical way: by imagining a sled animal. The smartest people thought that this was not about a horse, but about some unknown fantastic animal that we had caught. When they heard the horns hoarse beep, they said, “This is his voice.”
Previously in Old Photos: The solar eclipse of 1900, Kalmyk in closed Tibet.
Contributed by OldPik on January 6, 2025
Image
You must be logged in to comment on the photos.
Log in
Log in
No comment yet, be the first to comment...