The Great 1908 Race rallied readers and auto aficionados alike. It proved to be one of the great publicity stunts of its time. The nascent auto industry had a lot to prove and hearts to win. Plus, two sponsoring newspapers, the New York Times and Le Matin in Paris, wanted more readers.
The plan was considered outrageous at best. Automobiles driven by teams would begin at the start line in New York City on February 12, 1908. Their mission was to drive a predetermined westward course across America, Asia, Russia and Europe. The first car to cross the finish line in Paris would win.
Spoiler alert: It took 169 days.
The Race became a cultural phenomenon with newspapers reporting the often grim details and readers following their favorite contestants across continents. Crowds cheered them on in every town and city.
Several books and extensive articles have been written about the race and it inspired the 1965 cult classic film, The Great Race.
Check out these Fast and Furious Facts about the Great 1908 Race.
Rules Of The Road Were Simple – On The Drawing Board Anyway
Organizers of the Great 1908 Race required contestants to drive more than 22,000 miles from New York City to Paris in the shortest time. It meant approximately 13,000 miles on land and 8,000 on water.
At least that was plan #1.
The route was initially calculated as the crow flies, without any detours, obstacles and other unpleasant circumstances that arose. It was altered three times along the way, due to unpleasant surprises, of which there were many.
The starting line was set in Times Square in New York City. Teams would drive to Albany, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle to Valdez in Alaska. Going on the assumption that the Bering Strait would be frozen, drivers would cross to Siberia and then through Russia and Europe to the finish line in Paris.
As it turned out, the Bering Strait was not passable for drivers in 1908, so organizers had to pivot. Instead, contestants shipped their automobiles to Japan.
Let’s Get Ready To Rumble!
Six cars from four countries entered the Great 1908 Race. Yes, patriotism played a big competitive role among the entrants. And several of the competitors had already proven themselves to be daredevils.
–AmericanThomas Flyer / driver Montague Roberts and head mechanic George Schuster.
According to the Douglas County Historical Society:“Initially, no one from America would enter the race. President Theodore Roosevelt requested the manufacturer of the Thomas Flyer car, E.R. Thomas Motor Company in Buffalo, to enter the race.” At the last minute, the Thomas company pulled a production model from its factory to enter the race.
Schuster was a blue-collar mechanic who kept the lightweight, 40-horsepower Flyer running. He and Koeppen on the German team battled fiercely until the bitter end.
–Italian Züst / driver Antonio Scarfoglio
According to Curt Mekemson in Wandering Through Time And Space, Scarfoglio was a poet and journalist. He threatened to take a motorboat across the Atlantic until he got permission to enter the race from his father – a prominent Italian newspaper editor.
–German Protos / driver Lt. Hans Koeppen
He was a rising officer in the Prussian army – amiable, with a willpower of steel. He was chosen by Kaiser Wilhelm who was determined to win the trophy in the name of his country. Their car was a canvas-topped 40-horsepower monster.
–French DeDion-Bouton / Bourcier de St. Chaffrey
Chaffray once organized a Marseille-Algiers motorboat race during which every boat sank. And Norwegian Hans Hendrick, also on the De Dion team had solo piloted a Viking boat to the North Pole. (Wandering Through Time and Space)
–French Motobloc / Baron Charles Godard
–French Sizaire-Naudin / August Pons
Given the lack of infrastructure for automobiles, each stocked extra gasoline and spare parts in addition to automotive tools. They also carried general supplies for digging out of tight situations, including ropes, shovels and chains.
Statistics Were The Drive Shaft Of The Race
In the 1890s, pedestrians and horse-drawn vehicles still ruled the road with only a few automobiles clamoring between them. These were mostly hand-built, often one-of-a-kind experimental models.
By 1899, an estimated thirty American companies were manufacturing approximately 2,500 automobiles. Nearly 500 more companies joined the fun in the first decade of the 1900s. Most of those did not last. (NES Fircroft Foundation)
by 1900, approximately 8,000 automobiles rumbled in America.
In 1908, Ford released The Model T. Within days of the announcement, more than 15,000 customers placed orders.
Despite the obvious growth pattern, many people across America and Europe were scared or suspicious of the newfangled transportation that terrified horses and humans alike. Roads and infrastructure were not yet built and automobiles were not reliable for longer trips.
Publicity Wheels Were Turning
Exponential leaps in transportation through the Industrial Era created a need for speed. With that came a competitive spirit that itched like a case of Victorian Fern Frenzy.
And of course, the entrepreneurial spirit bolstered by greed drove investors in automobile companies.
Enter the Great 1908 Race to prove reliability of the horseless carriage and create good publicity for the nascent automobile industry.
Equally important were advances in printing. Newspapers and magazines were increasingly affordable to the masses along with postcards, posters and other forms of communication for advertisers.
Races Won Eyeballs – And Captivated Hearts Thanks To Jules Verne
Captivating stories that won eyeballs were in high demand. While humans have always dreamed of what’s beyond their reach, the modern inspiration for the sport of racing around the world belongs to Jules Verne.
Readers and consumers had a huge appetite for global races and stunts through the late 1800s and early 1900s.
To name a few big news stories of the time:
1890-Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland raced in opposite directions around the world to beat each other and Jules Verne’s fictional record around the world in eighty days. Sponsored by the New York World newspaper. Read All About It!
Sunday July 22, 1894-Two Petrol Powered French vehicles won the first car race for comfort and speed. Read All About It!
1895- Annie Londonderry. mother of three, biked around the world, although she had never ridden a bike before the trip. Read All About It!
1895-The Duryea Brothers won the first American car race on Thanksgiving Day-Sponsored by the Chicago Times-Herald to win readers away from the Daily Tribune.. Read All About It!
1896- George Harbo and Frank Samuelson rowed from New York harbor to the French port of Le Havre by way of the Atlantic Ocean. Sponsored by the New York Herald newspaper. Read All About It!
1903-Horatio Nelson Jackson and his dog Bud were the first to drive from San Francisco to New York. Read All About It!
1906- Daredevil Driver Fred Marriott set the land speed record. Read All About It!
1908-The Great Race-New York to Paris. Sponsored by the New York Times and Le Matin. Other newspapers including the Omaha Daily Bee boosted circulation with reports on the race as it passed through their towns. You’re Reading All About It!
1909-Alice Huyler Ramsey was the trailblazing driver for the first all-girl road trip across America. Read All About It!
The Course From New York to San Francisco Inspired Goofy Comedy
Newspapers across America and Europe reported details from The Great 1908 Race. They endured majestic mountains, boiling deserts, freezing blizzards – all with no roads, signage, gas stations, or drive-through burger joints. Think of the zany 1965 comedy, The Great Race starring Natalie Wood and Tony Curtis that was inspired by the many real-life trials and tribulations of the Great 1908 Race.
Following are a few racy highlights.
The race started New York’s Time Square with a single shot in the air from a pistol at 11:15 am. The streets were packed with “one of the greatest throngs that ever crowded into a small space” according to the New York Times, 2-7-1958.
“Their thick exhaust made spectators sneeze. Their explosive cylinders started echoes that died in the bunting that hung from the Astor, the Cadillac, Shanley’s and Rector’s. Cheers washed over them in volume, as they chugged north on Broadway under a clear sky. Their thunderous passing startled dray horses and carriage horses in the thoroughfare.” (N.Y. Times)
It wasn’t much of a race by today’s high-octane standards. But it was a supreme challenge for drivers and automobiles to see who could stand the most punishment.
Mother Nature dished out her fair share of challenges. Shortly after their glorious kick-off in Times Square, the automobiles were caught in 2-3 feet of snow. Dismal Hollow outside of Auburn, New York lived up (or down) to its name. The five automobiles still in the race became hopelessly bogged down in mud. Fortunately, the Italian Zust team hired horses that were able to pull all the cars out and back on the road.
And of course, there were mechanical tortures. The French Sizaire-Naudin surrendered on day one at mile 96 thanks to a broken differential.
The lack of infrastructure challenged everyone involved in the Great 1908 Race. Where roads were lacking or simply too tough to find, some of the automobiles bumped along on railroad tracks.
And there was plenty of personal adversity to go around. At one particularly challenging juncture, two drivers of the De Dion challenged each other to a duel.
In the Wild West the drivers were surrounded by packs of wolves, narrowly escaped a shoot-out and lost another French car.
After many more miles of snowdrifts, Nevada mud holes, deep sand and countless breakdowns, the Thomson Flyer arrived in San Francisco on March 24, 1908. It became the first automobile to cross the United States in the winter.
The Alaska Leg Hit A Small Snafu
After meeting so many mishaps between coasts, and with the three remaining competitors behind him, George Schuster was skeptical. So he hired a horse and sled to check out the road ahead. As it turned out, it was time well spent.
Planning the course from the comfort of their offices, the race organizers assumed that the Bering Strait would be frozen over in winter. But instead of a frozen road, it was a bog of melting slush. After Schuster contacted them with the bad news, the committee redesigned their official course for the third and last time.
Schuster was now seriously behind the other teams when organizers told them to ship their automobiles to Japan, then to Vladivostok, Russia. But they awarded Schuster 15 days for checking out Alaska. They also docked the Proto 15 days for skipping Japan due to a breakdown and ensuing snafu in rerouting.
For a detailed account of the Great 1908 Race, check out:
Hard Driving: The 1908 Auto Race From New York to Paris -by Dermot Cole; 1991.
Road race round the world; New York to Paris, 1908 by Robert Jackson; 1965.
Even Rougher Roads Through Russia and Asia
The New York Times’s special correspondent with the Thomas car described the final run across Europe through Russia, Germany, Belgium and France into Paris in the New York Times Sunday edition on August 16, 1908:
The final Dash Across Europe In The Paris Race.
George MacAdam, Times Staff Correspondent with the Thomas Car Tells of the Last Days of the Run From the Ural Mountains to the Finish.
“The story of the run through Manchuria and Siberia has already been quite fully told in special cablegrams and letters to The Times, and the readers of this paper are followers of the now historic race across three continents.”On July 7, the Thomson Flyer crossed into European Russia from the foothills at the edge of Siberia.
On July 9, they drove through the town of Perm where their tire burst. “Everybody ran, thinking we were anarchists and had exploded a bomb.”
But when they stopped at a post house, people gathered at a respectable distance, looking at them with wonder.
In addition to rugged terrain, they encountered rugged scowls.
“Automobiles are the rarest things in the world in the Province of Perm, and ninety-nine out of a hundred persons that we saw had never heard the chug-chug of an automobile before in all their lives.” (N.Y. Times)
Locals shook their fists menacingly at the Flyer, pointing to the open fields to indicate that they should leave the road to the horse-drawn caravans. The horses were even less welcoming, with many running from the Flyer.
“Fortunately, so far as these caravan runaways were concerned, I do not think that we caused a single serious accident.”
They left Asia and entered Europe where the locals were even more hostile toward the automobiles. They would become so frightened, many stopped in their tracks.
“My job was to jump out of the automobile and grab the horse whenever a runaway was threatened, and I am glad to say that on many occasions I was able to prevent them. On many others I was too late.”
They left Perm. and drove through a beautiful forest “peopled by picturesque Russian gypsies, who rushed out to see us as we passed and gasped in wonder at the car.”
Two hours later they reached the River Kama, where they crossed on an ancient ferryboat with several hundred villagers.
“We paid a quarter for the transportation of the automobile, villagers, and all, and the ferryman acted as if it was the biggest fee he had ever received.”
At one point Schuster took a wrong turn that cost him 15 hours. The Flyer sank in a mudhole that cost him another day’s time for repairs. Meanwhile, his arch rival, Lieutenant Koeppen in the German Protos, was on his way to a three-day lead.
The Italians were, in Atchunsk, 3,000 miles behind.
After many more near-misses and grueling challenges,Schuster and his crew arrived in Paris on July 30, 1908. The Flyer drove through the lines of lighted cafes, with crowds shouting wildly: “Vive le car Americain!”
But just as they were finally cruising toward the Place de l’Opéra, they hit one more kerfuffle when a gendarme stopped the car, declaring:
“You are under arrest,” he declared. “You have no lights on your car.”
A quick-thinking man on a bicycle rode up to the car, jumped off and deposited his bike, which had a headlight, in the Flyer next to Schuster. With that, the gendarme stepped aside.
Schuster’s arch-rival on the German team arrived in Paris in their Protos four days before, on Sunday, July 26, 1908, at 6:15 pm . But Schuster in the American Flyer was declared the winner due to a 3-day penalty given to the Germans for taking shortcuts along the race route, including sending their car to Seattle from Pocatello, Idaho, by train.
Schuster and his team were given a hero’s welcome home, ticker-tape parade when they returned to New York on August 17, 1908, much like Nellie Bly received in January of 1890 on her arrival from her challenge to Jules Verne’s record around the world in 80 days.
The Race Promoted Infrastructure For Automobiles
The Great 1908 Race took place when infrastructure for cars left much to be desired.
For starters, there were few paved roads in 1909 and America was largely unmapped. Of the roads that were paved, most were not yet named or numbered. Navigation was more of a treasure hunt than a science.
They did have their trusty Automobile Blue Book, A Guide For Bikers and Road Travelers, (first edition 1901) but it was not entirely reliable.
At one point on Alice Huyler Ramsey’s road trip, for example, the book said she and her passengers should turn left at a “yellow house and barn.” The farmer, who was not a fan of automobiles, had painted his house green.
As automobiles became increasingly popular all of this changed. Roads, maps, laws, traffic signals, gas stations at frequent intervals, parking lots, highways. And of course modern conveniences from motels to drive-through eateries were born along with inconveniences from road rage to smog and greenhouse gases.
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