IItalian journalist Luigi Barzini recalled the unexpected welcome he received in 1907 in Russian villages east of the Ural Mountains. Peasant women spat in his direction and made what he described as “strange signs of exorcism.” This treatment had to do with the mysterious device Barzini and his companions used to drive through the villages. It was a car—an Itala, to be precise—and its occupants were on an extraordinary journey, an 8,000-mile race from Beijing, then called Peking by those in the West, to Paris. With Prince Scipione Borghese directing its progress, aided by his chauffeur Ettore Guizzardi and Barzini, the Itala had followed the field comfortably as it made its way toward the Urals.
At the time, the future of the automobile seemed uncertain. It was widely seen as a luxury item that paled in comparison to the horse as a means of transport. Driving from Asia to Europe by car seemed madness, given the lack of roads, let alone good ones – to one newspaper, the Peking-Paris seemed as improbable as sending men to the moon by telegraph. Yet the eventual winner, Prince Borghese, proved that the race could be completed – as did the international rivals he left in the dust, including a memorable French con man named Charles Godard and his Dutch-made Spyker. The Peking-Paris helped usher in the age of the automobile, a radical change in society at every level that we still struggle with today, as explored in a new book by British author Kassia St Clair, The Race to the Future: 8,000 Miles to Paris.
“It’s a really compelling, cinematic, great story,” says St Clair, “about a very glamorous period in history. It’s starting to become this moment in history where technology is turning the world upside down.”
It wasn’t just automotive technology – there was also the telegraph, which reporters in cars used to keep the public informed at rest stops. Coverage appeared in newspapers around the world, including the French publication Le Matin, which conceived of the race to burnish its country’s glory as a centerpiece of the automobile. Things didn’t go as planned. An Italian team won by a comfortable margin, and the following year Henry Ford’s Model T debuted in the U.S. – a sign that momentum was shifting across the Atlantic.
Momentum was hard to come by in the race. Just an hour after the five-car field left Beijing, mechanical problems forced one competitor, the three-wheeled, French-made Contal Mototri, to drop out. The remaining competitors struggled from start to finish: heatstroke in the Gobi Desert, record rainfall in Siberia, a broken wheel between Perm and Kazan in European Russia.
“They had a lot of equipment, a lot of spare parts,” St Clair says. “In the early days, they had to cross very steep terrain. There was no road, just a kind of mule and horse track, not wide enough, not designed for them.” As for the issue of fuel, she adds: “They had to constantly add oil. The Spyker used half a litre of oil a day. You use a lot of oil in the middle of the Gobi Desert.”
If anyone could overcome these difficulties, it was Borghese. Although his one-sidedness alienated French rivals who were more inclined to stick together, it kept him focused on the end result. It helped that he had previously undertaken an expedition to the Middle East. And unlike his competitors, he did so when Russian race officials advised him to take a different route over the Urals.
“He had advantages, but he was willing to do the work,” St Clair says. “He seemed more open to local, practical knowledge.”
“Maybe I felt a certain kinship,” she adds. “This [book project] was so big, took so many years, that it forced me to be perhaps more methodical in my research and record keeping. It was a huge project… It was perhaps similar to the way Prince Borghese approached his challenge.”
How methodical was St Clair? She charted each team’s progress through the race—a map that takes pride of place on her wall. She consulted vintage car manuals from the years leading up to the race, some of which line her bookshelves. And she consulted descendants of the competitors, including Barzini’s great-great-grandson, whom she tracked down the day before the manuscript went to print.
She peppered the story of the race with chapters on contemporary developments in the automobile—from the forgotten story of women drivers to reflections on the soon-to-be-defunct dynasties of China and Russia to the use of motorized transport in World War I, which almost certainly guaranteed the primacy of fossil fuels over alternatives such as electricity and alcohol.
“It’s a pick-your-own-adventure style,” she says. “You can read all the contextual chapters first, all the race chapters first.”
She compares the structure to that of her previous books, The Secret Lives of Color and The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History.
“The way they’re structured, you don’t have to read them from cover to cover, but you can jump in and out,” St Clair says. “I like writing that way. I’ve gotten feedback from readers – readers engage with them. They like being able to jump in and out.”
The contextual chapters sometimes raise questions about the role of cars in society then and now – questions of personal interest to the author. Describing herself as a child in the mid-1980s, she remembers rides in her father’s wood-paneled Volvo and getting her conditional driver’s license on her 18th birthday. Now a mother of a young daughter, she has tried riding a bike and acknowledges that her view of cars has changed.
“I still have a core of cars that are glamorous, exciting and necessary,” says St Clair. “The glamour and excitement are tied in my mind to adventure.” Yet, she adds, “as a kind of city dweller, I’m very aware of the damage they can do, the risks they pose, the pollution, the noise, the inconvenience to other people.”
There is a common thread that runs from her first book, The Secret Lives of Color, to her latest. She came across an explanation of why Italy adopted “racing red,” red raceas the car racing color. The story went that it was the color of Borghese’s Itala, and she included it in her book. That turned out not to be the case, but she wanted to know more about the Peking-Paris.
“At the time I was absolutely captivated,” says St. Clair, “completely captivated by the story,” which “still contained mysteries, rumors and accusations that circulated more than a century after the race ended.”
Many of these questions concerned Godard, particularly the question of how he managed to cover so much ground in Russia that he compromised Borghese’s pace.
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In total, Godard covered 4,330 kilometers in two weeks, including one epic 800-kilometer ride.
Bruno Stephan, the Dutch mechanic who reinforced Godard during this piece, confirmed only much later in his life – at the age of 88 in 1963 – that this area was not traveled by car, but by train and boat. Godard had long since disappeared from the scene, dying in 1919.
“[Godard] performed this series of incredible tests of endurance,” says St Clair. “He seemed to be a problem solver. He was charismatic and made a huge impression on people who met him even briefly.”
She then began to plot his movements on her map, along with those of his competitors.
“I had a breakthrough moment,” she says. “His reported movements through space were really suspicious, didn’t make sense.” She speculates about what might have happened “if other people had been looking at a map at that moment, at what he was saying.”
Still, it’s not enough to make him the villain in the book.
“The whole world loves an anti-hero, a villain,” St. Clair says, adding: “My respect for the prince grew as well.”
It was therefore only logical that Borghese and his team were the first to cross the finish line, much to the enthusiasm of the public in Paris.
“[The race] “It became a kind of worldwide news phenomenon,” St Clair says. “It was really interesting to watch, because it was this kind of worldwide demonstration of what the car could do. It got people excited.”
For the author it brought back memories of watching Driving to survive during the Covid lockdown.
“There are echoes of it now,” she says of Beijing-Paris. “The world follows teams and stories of human drama, money, athleticism, glamour. The seeds of so much of the way we think about cars, the way cars have revolutionized the world, are there in this incredible journey.”