Before LeMans
The Great French City to City Races


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Le Mans 1938
Le Mans
Le Mans 1962

The winning Itala of the famous Peking to Paris race
The winning Itala of the famous Peking to Paris race.

Recovering a car from a broken trestle bridge during the Peking to Paris
Recovering a car from a broken trestle bridge during the Peking to Paris.

A minor water crossing, on the Peking to Paris
A minor water crossing, on the Peking to Paris.

Locals assisting the Peking to Paris entrants
Locals assisting the Peking to Paris entrants.

Locals assisting the Peking to Paris entrants
Locals assisting the Peking to Paris entrants.

Locals assisting the Peking to Paris entrants
Locals assisting the Peking to Paris entrants.

A Peugeot of the first ever race, the Paris-Rouen
A Peugeot of the first ever race, the Paris-Rouen. The car was a 954cc V-twin. This photo was taken at the Peugeot works in Beaulieu-Valentigney.

Henri Farman takes time out to have a word with his riding mechanic during the Paris-Vienna of 1902
Henri Farman takes time out to have a word with his riding mechanic during the Paris-Vienna of 1902. We believe the picture to have been taken between Vienna and Salzberg. Farman would come 2nd in the event.

Comte de Dion



If anyone tells you different, they are wrong. Motor sport started in France. It was in 1887 that the Velocipede journal attempted to organise an auto race on the outskirts of Paris, but received only one entry, a little steam quadricycle driven by the Comte de Dion, which trundled solemnly down the short course before being declared the winner of the race.

Pierre Giffard



In 1894, Pierre Giffard, editor of Le Petit Journal, organised a reliability trial for horseless carriages on the road from Paris to Rouen, but this was just a test of reliability and economy of operation, with no official notice taken of the speeds or times of arrival of the competing vehicles, so strictly speaking this cannot be considered as a race.

The French motoring enthusiasts sought more, and, led by the Comte de Dion and the Baron de Zuylende Nyvelt de Haar, pressed for a proper race over a more realistic distance - perhaps as much as 700 miles. Pierre Giffard was willing to organise such a contest, but his board of directors forbade such a project out of hand: 'No one could cavil at a competition in which reliability was the chief factor; but a long race in which speed was the be-all and end-all was quite another thing. Supposing an accident were to take place - and if these automobiles could really attain the terrifying speed of fifteen or twenty miles an hour on the ordinary road, as had been proved in Paris-Rouen, such a catastrophe was more than likely to happen - it would give a handle to the political opponents of the Petit Journal which could be used with disastrous effect.

The Automobile Club de France



Undeterred by these voices of gloom, De Dion organised a committee to administer the proposed race. This committee, which first met at De Dion's house on 2nd November 1894, subsequently formed the nucleus of the Automobile Club de France. In mid-December, the committee issued regulations governing a 732-mile race from Paris to Bordeaux and back, to take place the following summer. It was immediately apparent that the committee was playing safe, as they stipulated that only cars seating more than two people would be eligible for the premier award of 50 per cent of the prize money. However, their defense was that they were not encouraging sheer speed, but a combination of speed and reliability, and that cars, which were merely fast, could not win, as they were bound to break down, as cars with only two seats were obviously designed for speed, ergo they could not win outright.

Makers could not enter several cars of identical design, drivers were allowed to change en route, and repairs could only be made under official observation using parts carried in the cars. Nearly £2800 in prize money was subscribed, by such notable motoring enthusiasts as James Gordon Bennett and William Kissem Vanderbilt, and a total of 46 vehicles was entered, 23 of which were petrol- driven, 13 were steam-powered, two were electric and the remainder were tricycles and bicycles of various sorts.

The French Institute of Civil Engineers



These were remarkably unimpressive in the race, and M. Collin, who made out the official report for the French Institute of Civil Engineers, concluded that the motor bicycle would never be anything other than a curiosity, and that even single-seater vehicles would always need to have four wheels. Car makers laid their plans for the race carefully: Panhard and Levassor arranged reserve drivers at Ruffec, the halfway stage, so that their cars each had only two drivers throughout the race (supply points were arranged at Orleans, Chatellerault, Ruffec and Bordeaux), while Peugeot gave their drivers special route instructions which included railway timetables in case of breakdown.

As it happened, these two marques were the principle contenders for the prize money, the Panhards gaining a considerable advantage from their front-mounted engines-not from any consideration of weight distribution, but simply because the wind blew out the ignition burners on the rear-engined Peugeots. Emile Levassor, driving a two-seater Panhard, went into the lead after Vouvray, driving through the night by the fitful gleam of his oil lamps at such a speed that his relief driver was still asleep when he reached Ruffec. So Levassor drove on, three hours ahead of the rest of the field, and turned round at Bordeaux with no more refreshment than (according to one story) champagne or (another version) bouillon.

Levassor entered Paris just before 1 pm on Thursday the 13th June, having taken 48 hours 48 minutes to cover the distance, an average of 15 mph. He was six and a half hours ahead of the next car, Rigoulot's Peugeot, but Levassor had not won the main prize, as his car was only a two-seater. His, however, was the moral victory and, as Rigoulet's car was also a two-seater, the first prize of 31,500 francs went to the third car on elapsed time. This was Koechlin's Peugeot, which took 59 hours 48 minutes and arrived just before midnight, along with Doriot's Peugeot, by which time the waiting spectators had lost much of their initial excitement. There were another five hours to wait for the next car, a Roger-Benz, and the remainder of the survivors straggled in over the next 30 hours, the ninth and last (and only remaining steam vehicle), an 1880 Bollee, limping home at 6 am on the Saturday morning, having averaged 6 mph for the race.

The big race of 1896 was the Paris-Marseilles-Paris run over ten daily stages to eliminate' strain on the drivers, but a change of date from October to September to avoid clashing with the Czar's state visit to Paris introduced a fateful element that was to turn the race into a grueling event for the drivers. After the first day's racing, the weather changed unexpectedly and dramatically: the barometer dropped and a freak storm swept across the country. The wind uprooted trees and telegraph poles, and torrential rain transformed the roads into slippery quagmires. Competing cars were blown across the road by a near-hurricane wind, which was powerful enough to stop them dead when it hit them head on; it also played havoc with the ignition burners of the engines.

Amedee Bollee



Amedee Bollee ran full tilt into a tree blown down across the road, shortening the wheelbase of his car by several inches and hurling his passengers into the mud; Delahaye's path was also blocked by a fallen tree, and he had to borrow a saw from a nearby cottage to cut the trunk into three and drag away the middle portion to clear his route. Bollee's car, No 21, was charged by a maddened bull and damaged beyond immediate repair; Panhard No 7 overturned and broke a wheel after colliding with a cart (but was repaired) and the crew of the Rossel, having pushed their car up a steep hill, sat down for a breather only to see the vehicle, set in motion by a sudden gust of wind, run away back- wards and smash to flinders at the foot of the slope.

Near Orange, the leading car, Levassor's Panhard, hit a dog and rolled over (which was almost as easy as rolling a Reliant Robin, as the early French automobiles were stubby, high riding and had tiller steering), inflicting internal injuries on Levassor which prevented him from driving after Avignon and which hastened his premature death the following year. On the way home, Panhard No 7 hit another cart and called it a day, while the Rochet-Schneider was attacked by another mad bull and badly damaged. The winner was Mayade's 8 hp Panhard, whose average speed of 15.7mph was highly creditable under the circumstances; no less remarkable was the fourth place secured by the injured Levassor and his co-driver, d'Hostingue, at an average speed of 14.8 mph.

There was no great race during 1897, just a 106 mile contest from Paris to Dieppe, remarkable more for technical innovations such as the extensive use of aluminum on the Panhards of De Knyff, Hourgieres and Prevost, and the introduction of the Grouvel & Arquembourg gilled-tube radiator on Girardot's Panhard: racing really was beginning to improve the breed! The other Paris-based race of 1897, Paris-Trouville, was of similar length. The first four Panhards to arrive all had the new gilled-tube radiators, while ex-racing cyclist Charron had endowed the boxy prow of his Panhard with a 'wind-cutting' fairing which seemed to give him no extra speed at all, as he finished twelfth. The most powerful machine in the race was de Dion's tricycle, a flimsy affair with a monstrous 18 hp engine grafted on behind.

In 1898 the Criterium des Entraineurs from Paris to Bordeaux was run, notable mainly as the first race in which racing colours were used, the Panhards of De Knyff, Charron and Girardot being painted blue, white and red respectively, and the spectacular Paris- Amsterdam-Paris race, designed as a demonstration and race combined, to prove to the world at large the capabilities and use of the self-propelled vehicle, which was still regarded in many places as an invention of the devil, and was thus divided into 'racing' and 'touring' classes. M. Bochet, examining engineer to the Prefect of Police of Paris, unexpectedly insisted that all the cars should possess roadworthiness certificates, which were required under an obsolete law. The worthy Bochet then examined - and failed - most of the competitors, and refused to allow permission for the race to start. To prevent anyone from starting without authority, Bochet posted a squadron of infantry on the Joinville road, then rode out to the official starting point at Champigny with a half-squadron of Hussars, having placed two guns on the road to Bry, so that any 'rebellious automobilists' could be mown down!

The problem was solved by moving the start into the neighbouring Seine-et-Oise area, where M. Bochethad  had no jurisdiction. This race saw the first real challenge to the Panhards in the shape of the new Bollee 'torpedoes', one of which, driven by Etienne Giraud, came third, behind Charron and Girardot's Panhards, all three cars beating the special Paris-Amsterdam train at speeds averaging between 26.9 and 27 mph: speeds that were remarkable in their day.

The Tour de France



In 1899, there were several races centred on Paris: the Paris-Bordeaux, run in a single day and won by Charron's Panhard; Paris-Roubaix, restricted to motor tricycles; Paris-St Malo, which attracted 92 entries, mostly tricycles; Paris- Trouville, a curious handicap event between cars, motor cycles, bicycles, horses and pedestrians, in which the order of arrival was horse, horse, motor cycle, car! Then there were Paris-Ostend (won by Girardot's Panhard), Paris- Boulogne (another victory for Girardot, belying his nickname of 'the eternal second') and the main race of the year, the Tour de France. This 1378-mile marathon started and finished at Paris, and saw the debut of the remarkable Bollee Torpilleurs de route, which had such advanced features as independent front suspension, a steel-channel chassis under-slung at the rear and a four-cylinder engine (the first successful monobloc unit) mounted at the rear of the chassis. But the carburetors sucked in road-dust and spoiled the new car's chances, their best showing being fifth place behind four Panhards.

The Paris-Toulouse-Paris



The main race of 1900 was the Gordon Bennett, but the Paris- Toulouse-Paris seems to have been the better event. It started as part of an over-ambitious event called the Course du Trifle. which was then re-planned as L' Etoile, a series of races starting and finishing in Paris, which was dropped in favor of L'Eventail, a series of races starting in Paris with a variety of finishing points.

S. F. Edge



This too, proved impossible to organise,and the final result was the 837-mile Paris-Toulouse-Paris race, which saw the first-ever entry of an English-built racing car in an international event. The car was the 16hp Napier driven by S. F. Edge (which failed to finish); the race was won by the consumptive 'Levegh' (the nom de course of one Velghe) driving a Mors – it was the end of Panhard invincibility. As the 1900 Gordon Bennett had been such a shambles, the 1901 event was combined with the Paris-Bordeaux and proved an even bigger flop, as the only Gordon Bennett entrant to finish was Girardot, who was ninth in the open race, which was won by Fournier's Mors. The second car home in the light-car category was Baras's Darracq, which arrived at Bordeaux with the engine held in the chassis by rope, as the bearers had broken!

The Paris-Berlin



The great race of 1901, the Paris-Berlin, was the last major event organised under a total formula libre, with no restrictions on engine capacity or overall weight. Its main hazard was the lack of crowd control in the villages through which the course passed, which resulted in a number of accidents-  Pinson went one better, and avoided the crowd but wrapped his 40 hp Panhard around a tram in a German town. The other hazards were stray dogs and choking clouds of road-dust, which obscured all forward vision - Degrais (Mercedes) thought he had the answer to this in steering by the treetops above the dust cloud, until he reached a point where the trees marched straight on and the road turned sharp left, with expensive consequences for the Mercedes. The winner was Fournier's Mors, which averaged 44. 1 mph over the difficult 687-mile course, having led most of the way, and thus kept ahead of the dust.

The 1902 Paris-Vienna



The 1902 Paris-Vienna saw competing vehicles limited to a maximum weight of 1000 kg (plus an allowance of 7 kg for a magneto), which had the unfortunate effect that manufacturers attempted to gain the maximum power-to-weight ratio by cramming huge engines into flimsy frames. Typical were the Panhards, with 13,672 cc engines in armored wood chassis. After necessary frame reinforcement, the Panhards proved robust enough to take first, third, fourth and fifth places in the heavy-car class (the un-braced frame of Jarrott's sister car, which was 23rd overall, broke en route and was patched with string and wood from a bedside table, smuggled out of an hotel in the driver's trousers). It was not a walkover for the monstrous Panhards though, for the first car home was the little 16 hp, 5429 cc, Renault driven by Marcel Renault.

The Gordon Bennett had been combined with this race, and was won by Edge's 40 hp Napier, which came r gth in the general classification. The route control of the Paris-Vienna had been carefully organised, with flag-waving marshals at every dangerous bend, but the lessons of that event were not applied to the great race of 1903, the Paris-Madrid, which was organised against a background of French Government disapproval (although King Alfonso had readily given permission for the Spanish part of the event). The decision was taken to start the race at 3.30 am on the morning of Sunday 24 May, so that the maximum number of spectators could watch the cars pass through France.

The competing vehicles represented the zenith of the misguided attempts of designers to subordinate all considerations to sheer engine power, their attempts at lightening their chassis often overruling all considerations of safety and strength. The racers were given a triumphant send-off from start at Versailles; a crowd of 100,000 people streamed out of Paris in the night. Along the route were countless cyclists with Chinese' lanterns slung from their handlebars, wagonettes, omnibuses, carriages, touring cars, with the occasional racing car, with open exhaust and raucous siren, forcing a path through the throng. At 3.45 am, Charles Jarrott led the field away down the road to Bordeaux, the dense crowd just parting sufficiently to allow the cars to pass: 'It seemed impossible that my swaying, bounding car could miss the reckless spectators', he later recalled. 'A wedge-shaped space opened out in the crowd as I approached, and so fine was the calculation made that at times it seemed impossible for the car not to overtake the apex of the human triangle and deal death and destruction. I tried slowing down, but quickly realised that the danger was as great at 40 miles an hour as at 80.

It merely meant that the crowd waited a longer time in the road; and the remembrance of those hundreds of cars behind me, the realisation that the hunt had commenced, made me put on top speed, and hope that Providence would be kind to the weak intellects which allowed their possesors to run such risks so callously.' Needless tp say, there were fearful accidents. The day was swelteringly hot, the road was exceedingly dusty, and the Services d'Ordre, who were supposed to be keeping the crowds back, 'served ... merely as additional crowds, specially privileged to stand in the middle of the road at all danger points. The result was a double line of human hedges scarcely two meters apart, between which one was asked to race at upwards of 50 mph.'

The Paris-Madrid



The carnage of Paris-Madrid has become legendary: 'all the later starters had passed cars in various stages of collapse-some in ditches, some in fields, some mere tangled and smoking heaps of scrap iron'. Marcel Renault had overturned with fatal results, Lorraine Barrow had hit a tree at 80 mph with a dog jamming the steering of his De Dietrich, Stead had been crushed when his sister car had overturned after an 80 mph collision with another competitor and Porter's Wolseley had burst into flames, killing Porter's mechanic, after hitting a wall in an attempt to avoid a closed level-crossing gate which had been deserted by its signalmen.

The ‘Race of Death’



Gras (De Dietrich) had hit another level-crossing gate, Beconnais (Darracq) and Jeandre (Mors) had run into one another and Tourand (Brouhot) had gone into the crowd in an effort to miss a soldier who had dashed after a child which had run into the road-the child, the soldier and Tourand's mechanic were all killed. The 'Race to Death’ as it was known, was 'halted at Bordeaux by Government edict, and the surviving cars were hauled to the railway station by draught horses, ready to be shipped back to Paris by train. It was one of the unpleasant episodes in the entire history of motor racing and one that caused much sorrow. The first man home at Bordeaux was Gabriel, driving one of the new Mors Dauphines, with a streamlined 'upturned-boat' bonnet, who, starting 168th, had carved his way through the field, through the scores of cars, blinding dust-clouds and wrecks, in 5 hours 14 minutes running time, averaging over 65 miles an hour.

After Paris-Madrid, the great age of the city-to-city races was over. Charles Jarrott said at the time: 'To my mind, it was a fitting- end to an inevitable happening that the curtain should have been rung down on the Paris-Bordeaux road, the scene of many a Titanic struggle, and the road on which Levassor himself showed to the world at large, in the first great motor race in history, the vast and-far-reaching possibilities of the motor-propelled vehicle.'

Also See: The Gordon Bennett Cup | Itala - The History of the Peking to Paris
Giraud with the 12 hp Panhard on the Paris Berlin of 1901
Giraud with the 12 hp Panhard on the Paris-Berlin of 1901.
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