The prince, the liar, and the race to save cars
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What sparked the 1907 worldwide automobile race and why was it important?
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Dr. Ann Jones here. I've been out and about recording nature sounds, but nature doesn't always oblige. For example, this wombat, yes, you, thought that my recorder was the perfect place to scratch its butt. So to find out what else that wombat got up to one night near Canberra, subscribe to Nature Sounds by Ann Jones. On ABC Listen, on podcast apps, and also on the Wombat Butt Scratching thumbs-up list.
It is 1907 and you are in Paris. It's a bright, beautiful morning in the city of love. You're at a cafe with a coffee and a croissant, and you casually turn to the newspaper sitting on the table.
And this newspaper, Le Matin, they have this really rousing editorial on their front page.
You gently place your coffee cup back on the saucer and pick up the paper with both hands. Just trying to process what you're reading. You see, it's an article about the automobile, which at this point in history, like, it's been around for a couple of decades, but this article shouts from the front page that the car, as we would call it today, it's not being taken seriously enough.
This is a technology that has been held back for too long, that's been raced on circular tracks like like racehorses. We would never kind of insult a brilliant technology like the train in this way, and we think the car can be like the train.
The article continues and it announces to the people of France, and indeed the people of the world, the race around the world will occur in an automobile.
And who who can kind of live up to this challenge, therefore showing that this technology is more than it is being used for at the moment.
You are excited. You are fired up and you jump out of your chair and you dash home to apply for this unprecedented opportunity. To be one of the drivers who will make history and be remembered forever.
They really truly believe that the names of the drivers will kind of live forever in in the way that we think of, you know, Shackleton, for example.
My name is Mark Fennell. And this is how a race around the world, with cars, not with video cameras, changed the way the world saw the automobile. But maybe not quite in the way they expected. From the instant they set off. It's a total mess. This race would go down in history as one of the worst road trips ever. It would put lives, reputations on the line. But it would also put the automobile on the map. And no one saw it coming.
So today, around the world, uh we see cars on country roads, zipping across highways, but at the turn of the twentieth century, the automobile was very much in its infancy. It was seen as an unstable passing fad and not really that reliable. Certainly not as reliable as the good old horse and carriage.
But you have a few different steps on the way to kind of a fully fledged car. You have personal versions of steam trains. So you have conveyances like that are organized kind of like a private carriage that can house or transport a couple of people that are powered by steam. And then what people often think of as the first car is invented in the 1880s.
On january twenty ninth, eighteen eighty six, a German mechanical engineer, Karl Benz, applied for a patent for his vehicle powered by a gas engine,
How did early automobile technology evolve before the race?
To many, that patent, it's the birth certificate of the automobile. The vehicle had three wheels, and it was called the Benz Patent Motor Car. But as good as Carl was, it was actually his wife, Bertha, that went on the first long-distance journey in automotive history.
She's actually the kind of the more business-brained of the two. She's the one who kind of brought the capital to the arrangement. And she decides that she's going to, without her husband's knowledge, she's going to take the vehicle, take her kids, and go and visit a uh a relative about 40 kilometers away from where they live. And her taking the vehicle and then driving it this distance becomes kind of part of the founding myth of the car but also proves that this technology is viable. She does something practical with it.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What sparked the 1907 worldwide automobile race and why was it important?
0:00–3:41
2
How did early automobile technology evolve before the race?
3:41–6:19
3
Why did the French newspaper Le Matin launch the Peking‑to‑Paris challenge?
6:19–10:47
4
Who were the five main contestants and what were their cars like?
10:47–16:17
5
What logistical nightmares (fuel, roads, animals) did the racers face across the Gobi and Russia?
16:17–20:47
6
How did the race turn chaotic and what incidents caused the biggest delays?
20:47–25:36
7
Did any competitors cheat, and how was the alleged cheating uncovered?
25:36–25:46