Following the overwhelming success of the 2007 event planning has started for a new route down the Silk Route for another Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, starting in Peking on September 11th, 2010, taking 36 days to reach Paris.
Many Peking Paris runners will have received help from Robin Grant's famous blob of wonder-glue... alas, he suddenly died recently. As tribute, Philip Young devoted his dining-out column in the Old Stager magazine of the Historic Rally Car Register to two Formula One back room boffins who took up Historic Rallying with such aplomb. See the forthcoming column by clicking >> HERE
Click >> Peking to Paris - The DVD << to find the 10 part series of Peking-Paris 2007 programmes on DVD, as shown earlier this year on the Travel Channel. Unmissable for anyone who was there and invaluable for anyone thinking of taking part in 2010.
The >> 2010 Peking to Paris << entry list has already reached 75 cars. To see more and register your interest in the 2010 event. Please read the details as enquiries without a postal address details may be ignored.
Click >> Peking to Paris - The Ultimate Driving Adventure << to order the lavishly illustrated book of the 2007 event.
Celebrating the remarkable achievements exactly of 100 years ago with a timed re-enactment of the original “great race” – the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge… the first-ever trans-Continental motor-rally. It became an epic challenge between a Prince and a Pauper – Prince Borghese had the best funded entry and carefully researched the conditions of setting out on a journey where the first 5,000 miles saw no roads, at all, so, no maps and no garages. His chief rival was a fair-ground worker who until he read news of the race in a Paris newspaper, Le Matin, picked up blowing in the wind, he had never even sat in a motor-car, so had no idea how to drive one.
Five cars set out from Peking, four made it to Paris to a tumultuous welcome and world-wide fame – they had set out to prove that man and machine could now go anywhere, they hoped it would make borders between countries redundant. They had left Peking with no passports – these had been confiscated by Chinese authorities who suspected they were spies, and had no interest in seeing the success of the motor-car having just invested in shares in the trans-Siberian railway.
The second Peking to Paris was not held until the summer of 1997, when on the 90th anniversary, our organisation staged the first-ever rally for classic and vintage cars to cross China, and the first-ever rally to cross Tibet – we camped at the foot of Mount Everest. We also cracked open the border between Tibet and Nepal.
The border at Friendship Bridge between Tibet and Nepal had been closed for 40 years since it was slammed shut by Chairman Mao – the 90th Anniversary Peking to Paris negotiated the re-opening, it remains open today, we drove on into India and Pakistan, and were the first rally to cross Iran since the 1977 London to Sydney Marathon. Of 96 cars that set out, all but nine made it to the celebrations in Place de la Concorde, and TV film of the epic drive has been seen in more than 80 different countries. In New Zealand, our Peking to Paris became part of the school curriculum for children who followed the adventures of the mad motorists as part of their geography lessons.
This site contains some of the background to four years of careful preparations by the Endurance Rally Association – organisers of over 50 major events – planning a route tackled by nearly 300 competitors and officials, through some of the world’s remotest terrain.