THE STORY

In 1908, barely 15 years after the automobile was invented, the seemingly preposterous suggestion that an automobile race be run from New York to Paris was made. This race, proposed by newspapermen of the New York Times and Le Matin of Paris, was to be made over untried roads; the sponsors believed it would be possible to drive in Alaska by widening dog trails and, in the far North, driving on the crust of the snow that, according to one Times document, "froze so solidly overnight that it would bear the weight of a car." They also believed that contestants would be able to drive a car on frozen rivers and to cross the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia on an ice bridge.



This sort of misinformation, coupled with the daring, adventuresome spirit of early automobile makers and the promise of honor and glory, lured thirteen contestants to sign up for the race.

However, on February 12, 1908, the day the race was to begin, only six teams actually showed up. The entrants included three cars made in France and one each made in Italy, Germany, and the United States.

The French entries included a 30 hp Motobloc, a big De Dion, and a tiny one-cylinder, 15 hp Sizaire-Naudin. Italy was represented by a Zust, Germany by a big Protos, and the U.S. by a year-old, 60 hp Thomas Flyer. All of the cars had four cylinders (except the Sizaire-Naudin), open bodies with no windshields, narrow spoked wheels, no heaters, and only the most basic seating for driver and passengers.

Each team consisted of a driver and one or more mechanics. In addition, each car was required to carry a writer/observer from one of the sponsoring newspapers.

The race got underway in front of the Times Building on 43rd Street at 11:15 A.M. on Abraham Lincoln's birthday, 1908.

The Sizaire-Naudin driven by Auguste Pons led the procession up Broadway and onto the Albany Post Road. It was the only time Pons had the lead; while climbing a hill only 40 miles from the city, his car broke an axle. There were no spare parts available for his car, and Pons spoke no English. Thus the race ended for him on the very first day.

Language was also a problem for the crew of the French Motobloc. They stopped for lunch at a hotel in Dobbs Ferry, New York, and after waiting two hours to be served, became furious and accused the proprietor of overcharging and delaying them. To add injury to insult, just a few miles north at Peekskill, the Motobloc skidded in the snow and landed in a ditch, delaying it further. Snow and language difficulties continued to plague the Motobloc team, and they finally dropped out of the race three weeks later in western Iowa.

The remaining four cars fought onalthough their battles were as much or more with Mother Nature as with one another.

From the newspaper stories, one can piece together a fascinating description of the race. However, a somewhat more coherent account is found in the book, The Longest Auto Race, by George Schuster, the mechanic on the American Thomas Flyer. Moreover, Schuster and the Flyer team stayed in the race long after even the hardiest newspapermen had dropped out.

Schuster records constant problems with snow as the cars progressed along the route from New York to Albany, Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, South Bend, and Chicago. In fact, Ohio and Indiana had one of the worst blizzards of the decade just after the cars left Buffalo.

What should have been a two- or three-day trip from Buffalo to Chicago became a week-long ordeal for the Flyer team: in and out of snow drifts, driving on railroad tracks, hiring teams of horses to pull the car a few miles, and dealing with every sort of mechanical problem.

Beyond South Bend, the team was forced to hire teams of six or eight horses to drag the car along. On February 22 Schuster spent $80 on horse teams and covered only 15 miles. The next day, the Flyer team struggled for 22 hours and covered a grand total of eight miles.

The chores of draining the water from the cooling system every night (antifreeze had not yet been invented) and making constant small repairs added to the frustration of slow progress.

Finally, at 4:25 P.M. on February 25, the Flyer team reached the South Shore Country Club, the official arrival point in Chicago. Schuster notes that it took 13 1/2 days to travel the 1403 miles from New York, eight days of which were required to cover the last 256 miles. All of the teams spent a few days in Chicago recuperating and making needed repairs before starting westward on "tracks of half-frozen ruts" on the morning of February 28.

Now the battle was with thick, gooey mud, which the wheels and tires threw in big gobs onto the fenders, running boards, and interior of the car. Schuster records that when the Flyer team pulled into Clarence, Iowa, to stop for the night, someone suggested that they take the car to the fire station to get the mud washed off. The high-pressure three-inch stream was so effective that the Flyer crew visited fire stations whenever they could from then on. The thrill of the trip had worn thin for the Times correspondent, and a day later in Cedar Rapids he bade the American crew good bye and returned to New York.

The Plains States brought more rain and mud, which, as the cars reached the mountains, turned into sleet, hail, and snow.

Conditions were so bad in Utah and eastern Nevada that it became clear that crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains (the direct route to San Francisco) would be impossible. So the Flyer team took a 700-mile detour south through the Nevada desert and Death Valley to Bakersfield, California and back up along the San Joaquin Valley to San Francisco.

The Flyer team made it to San Francisco on March 24, a total of 3836 miles and 41 days after leaving New York. At the time, the Italian Zust was in Utah and the French De Dion and the German Protos were in Wyoming, all pushing west. With the help of the Thomas Flyer dealer in San Francisco, that car was prepared, as much as possible, for the unknown rigors of Alaska and Siberia that lay ahead. Springs, transmission, wheels, drive chains, and many other parts were replaced in the three days before the car was loaded on the steamer City of Pueblo for the three-day voyage to Seattle. There, five tiresall that could be foundwere purchased and Schuster wired owner Mr. Thomas at the factory for additional funds.

The crew and car sailed north on a leisurely seven-day voyage to Valdez, Alaska. There they learned the truth about the proposed route: Dog trails didn't exist, snow would not support a car, and there was no ice bridge across the Bering Strait. They telegraphed this information to New York and soon received a response: "Return to Seattle. Route changed. Go by steamer to Vladivostock." Meanwhile, the Zust and the De Dion had arrived in San Francisco, while the Protos, much in need of repairs, had been shipped by its crew aboard a railroad flatcar from Idaho across the Sierra Nevadas to Seattle, avoiding the 700-mile "detour" taken by the other cars.

The Protos sailed immediately for Vladivostock; the other teams, unable to get a steamer for Russia, sailed instead for Japan. The Flyer crew, afraid that those teams would get credit for driving across Japan, decided to take a steamer for Kobe, Japan. On the voyage, the leather aprons with which the Flyer crew had replaced their metal fenders were removed by the Chinese crew to make sandals. The captain ordered the ship's carpenter to replace the aprons with canvas and, Schuster reported, "except for that our voyage was uneventful." As it turned out, the Flyer crew need not have worried about the newly added Japan segment.. The race committee ruled that the Protos would be penalized 15 days for not driving all the way across the U.S. and that the Flyer crew would be given a 15-day advantage for going to Alaska.

The trip across Japan from Kobe to Tsuruga was only 350 miles, but torturous miles they were. Japanese roads were designed for narrow carts, and the big cars could barely negotiate the sharp turns and steep hills. What should have been an easy two-day drive turned into a four-day ordeal punctuated by delays for religious processions, detours, wrong turns, and skids into ditches. Although it was commonly thought that the Japanese worked for coolie wages, one group of workmen insisted on 50 yen ($25) for manning a towrope to let the Flyer down a steep hillside.

Sailing from Tsuruga on May 16, the Flyer and its crew finally arrived in Vladivostock in a gloomy rain on May 18. The other cars were all there, but the eccentric Count De Dion, his team having already driven and won the Peking to Paris race the year before, decided he had much to lose and little to gain by continuing on, and pulled his team out of the race.

Gasoline was extremely scarce in Russia, and the Protos and Zust teams had lined up most of the existing supplies. Schuster was thus forced to cash his last letter of credit to buy 400 gallons of gasoline at exorbitant prices ($1.00 to $1.25 per gallon). Most of this was then shipped ahead by rail to be stored along the route where the team could retrieve it in the days ahead. This was necessary because there were no filling stations, and gasoline would not be commercially available until the cars reached Europe. The teams stocked up on food and supplies and were ready to go on May 22. "You are mad," a Russian officer told them. "You will never get through." It rained during 17 of the next 20 days and, recounted one driver, "we drove out into a dismal, flat, rain-drenched country, over or rather through a road that was a streak of mud as far as the eye could reach." The Flyer drove in low or second gear with chains on the rear wheels.

In one of the most memorable events of the race, the Flyer came upon the Protos so deep in the mud that only the tops of the rear wheels showed above the mire. The three Germans and a Russian officer/guide were trying to pry it out, but with the churning of the wheels it was only sinking deeper. After a brief debate among themselves, the Flyer crew passed a towrope to the Germans and managed to pull the Protos to solid ground. Lt. Koeppen, the German team captain, uncorked a bottle of champagne and poured drinks as thanks for what he called "a gallant, comradely act."

Finally, unable to make any progress in the muddy cart tracks, the Flyer crew took to driving along railroad tracks, a strategy they had successfully usedat great cost to the wheels, tires, and springson several stretches in the U.S. Two tires quickly blew out, and four more were worn to the cords in the next 150 miles. The organizers had ruled that the cars would not be permitted to fit special wheel flanges that would allow them to drive on the rails but that driving on the ties was permitted.

Soon, however, the pounding on the ties began to take an even greater toll than the tires and springs. A sharp noise signaled a six-inch crack in the Flyer transmission housing and the stripping of six gear teeth from the drive pinion. Schuster then made a five-day trip to Harbin where he cabled the factory to send a new transmission by way of Europe. Meanwhile, the crew made makeshift repairsnew teeth were welded to the drive pinion at a blacksmith shopand slowly pushed on.

Mechanical devices, much less automobiles, were virtually unknown in Manchuria and Siberia, and lubricants were unavailable. Thus the crew was forced to buy 40 lbs. of Vasoline in Chita to quiet the gears and allow them to keep moving. At Irkutsk, completely out of money, Schuster again wired the factory for more. He received it, but Thomas warned him that he was disinclined to pour any more money into this adventure. Also at Irkutsk when the mud was washed from the car, he discovered a broken motor support. Schuster replaced it with a piece of boiler plate from the railroad shops, but the break had thrown the motor out of line, making it difficult to shift gears.

It rained so constantly through Siberia that the road was a continuous bog. The car frequently got stuck, and laborers or horse teams had to be hired to pull it out. Near Kansk was a swollen river with a quicksand bottom and no bridge; there the Flyer crew hired four teams of Cossacks' horses to rush the car across a fording spot. The next day they came upon a river so deep it could not be forded, so the crew hired villagers to make a log raft to float the car across.

Deep ditches across the roads were frequent hazards in Siberia. On one occasion, completely worn brake drums failed to stop the Flyer in time at one of these ditches; there was a sudden snap, and the left side of the car sagged. The frame was broken, creating an awkward problem in the middle of nowhere. Finally, angle iron was secured from a railroad shop and bolted to the broken frame.

The Protos had been in the lead across most of Russia, but finally, near the village of Kolnokowa, the Flyer caught up with and passed the German competitor. However, a few days later, on July 1 in Omsk, 3408 miles from Vladivostock, the makeshift transmission repairs on the Flyer gave out. The new transmission had been shipped two weeks earlier aboard the SS President and should have been waiting. It wasn't, so again the crew laboriously forged new teeth at a blacksmith shop and welded them on. This cost three days, but on July 4, the Flyer was back on the road. The Protos, too, had run into trouble and was obliged to wait in Kansk for five days until a new rear axle could be shipped from the factory in Germany.

Schuster, fearing that the transmission would soon fail permanently, sent two crew members (two mechanics from teams that had dropped out had joined the Flyer crew) to check all the railroad depots in the area for the missing transmission while the car pushed slowly on toward Perm. There he received word that the missing transmission had been located at Kasan, 350 miles ahead and more or less on the route west. However, the mud was so bad that the car could never be shifted out of low, and three days out of Permstill 215 miles from Kasanthe transmission failed for good.

Schuster then used the last of his money to arrange relays of farm wagons to fetch the 600-lb. transmission. It took five days, by which time Schuster, walking with the wagons day and night, was sick with chills and a high fever. Installing the transmission took another day, and on July 18 the team finally reached Kasan where they took a steam ferry across the Volga River. A wrong turn, a leaky radiator, and another break in the frame slowed the Flyer, but finally at Gorky they reached the relatively smooth pavement of some of the oldest roads in Europe.

But there were problems with these roads, too. When driven at speed on a good surface, the Flyer wobbled all over the road; the repaired motor support broke again and was out of alignment with the clutch and transmission. The tires were worn through, and the radiator was still leaking. Thus, the team had to stop for several days in Moscow to make more repairs.

The Flyer team reached St. Petersburg on the afternoon of July 22, four days behind the Protos; three days later, the Flyer crossed the border into Germany. The radiator sprang yet another leak and was removed for more repairs at the ancient fortress city of Konigsberg. The crew reached Berlin on July 27, and there heard the disheartening news that the Protos had arrived in Paris the night before. Rolling along perfectly smooth road outside of Hanover, the car slowed down and finally coasted to a stop. The makeshift clutch shaft installed in Moscow had worn away completely, again necessitating complete disassembly and repair. The 30-lb. assembly was hauled to a machine shop many miles away where it took another half day to make and install a new part.

At noon the next day, having had little food or rest, the Flyer crew drove into Cologne, looking forward to a washup and a good meal. "Not here, not here," said the head waiter of the Dom Hotel, shaking his head and waving the motley crew out of the restaurant. After an unsatisfying meal at a small cafe, they left the city and crossed the Rhine into Liege, Belgium, to spend the night.

Leaving early on July 30, they followed the Meuse River and crossed into France at Fumay. Accelerator to the floor, they attained a speed of 50 mph, the highest since they had left the United States. Approaching Paris late in the afternoon, they were stopped by gendarmes who refused to let them pass without headlamps (they had broken weeks before in Siberia). A passing Frenchman gallantly offered one from his bicycle. When the lamp could not be detached, the bicycle was lifted onto the car, and the journey was resumed amid cheering crowds.

At 6:00 P.M. on July 30, the Thomas Flyer pulled up in front of the offices of Le Matin and, with the credit for going to Alaska and the penalty against the Protos, was declared the winner of the longest automobile race in history by 26 days. The only other car still in the race, the Italian Zust, finally reached Paris on September 17, missing second place by only three days.

Winning the race briefly spurred sales of the Thomas Flyer, but the euphoria was short-lived. In 1909, Henry Ford introduced the Model T, thus ending the age of expensive hand-crafted automobiles. A year later, only 913 Thomas Flyers were produced, and the following year the company left the business.

Note: The restored chassis of the competing Protos is on display in the Deutches Museum in Munich, Germany, and the restored Thomas Flyer is at the Harrah Automotive Museum in Reno, Nevada. The Zust was not preserved.

