World’s 1st Motor Racing Event Had A 90 Mins Lunch Break
The 1894 Paris-Rouen race averaged 11mph ushering a new era of motor racing
In the 1890s, cars were still a relatively untested technology. Various steam-powered contraptions had been chugging along the roadways since the late-18th century, but more lightweight, driver-friendly vehicles had only arrived on the scene as recently as 1886 when German inventors Karl Friedrich Benz and Gottlieb Daimler developed gasoline-powered autos with internal combustion engines.
Cars were considered the playthings of the super-rich, and the notion of racing them was almost entirely foreign — as foreign as we deciding to colonize Mars.
A French cycling magazine had organized what would have been the world’s first automotive competition in 1887, but the contest had not come off as planned. The race was 29 kms distance between Neuilly Bridge in Paris and the Bois de Boulogne.
A wealthy playboy and renowned duellist Count Jules de Dion successfully negotiated the course in a steam-powered quadricycle. He was the only driver who bothered to show up.
Motoring was still very much in its infancy when Pierre Giffard, editor, and owner of the Parisian newspaper Le Petit Journal, hit upon the idea of staging the world’s first motor event. Sporting events were a tried and test form of a publicity stunt and circulation booster.
Pierre Giffard, the paper’s editor, promoted it as a “Competition for Horseless Carriages”, a 79-mile trial along the bumpy roads between Paris and Rouen in Normandy. The winner was to be the vehicle which, in the opinion of the judges (all of whom were on the staff of Le Petit Journal) saw the contest as a showcase to test horseless carriages as a viable form of transportation.
Rather than speed, the winner would be judged whether the cars were “easy to operate for the competitors without any dangers and not too expensive to run.” It thus blurred the distinctions between a reliability trial, a general event, and a race.
Hoping for a large turn-out to ensure maximum publicity for his newspaper, Giffard was no doubt heartened to receive entries from 102 drivers putting their names forward to compete for the handsome prize of 5,000 francs to be shared amongst the winners. Competitors had to pay a 10-franc entrance fee. The entry list contained a vast array of vehicles, hardly any two alike, and featuring no fewer than 20 different methods of propulsion.
These ranged from the more conventional steam-powered designs to the new-fangled petrol-powered cars to contraptions driven by compressed air, clockwork, gravity, a system of pendulums, ‘a combination of animate and mechanical motor’ and even the rocket-like Bicycle, a device which was propelled solely by the weight of its passengers..!
Other vehicles included an 8-seater, 4-ton, steam behemoth driven by a Mr. Scotte, a parcel delivery van, and even a steam-powered tricycle. Of all the cars, only one utilized a modern steering wheel — the rest were maneuvered by levers and tillers.
The drivers were a veritable “who’s who” of early motoring. The Count Jules de Dion — the winner and sole participant of the 1887 race — planned to pilot a steam tractor that towed a carriage behind it; manufacturers Paul Panhard and Emile Levassor came to show off their gas-powered Panhard & Levassor motorcar, and drivers Albert Lemaitre and Auguste Doriot entered cars made by French automotive giant Peugeot.
Qualifying at 8 mph
The organizers laid down strict regulations governing which vehicles would actually be allowed to compete. First, there was an inspection test that eliminated all but 25 of the original 102, principally the more bizarre entries.
The event itself was scheduled for June 7th but with a number of vehicles still not ready by the start of that month, it was postponed until July 22nd.
This allowed more opportunity to arrange a 32-mile qualifying trial, which every competitor had to pass. The time limit set was three hours, thus necessitating an average speed of just over 10 mph, but this was deemed too harsh and so the time was extended to four hours, thereby reducing the required speed to a more attainable 8mph.
Seventeen vehicles took part in the first qualifying run on July 19th, but only 13 passed. A second run on July 20th saw all six starters pass and two more qualified the following day, to leave a starting line-up of 21 (all powered by either petrol or steam engines) for the 79-mile journey to Rouen.
The route ran via Nanterre, St Germain, Mantes (where the drives would stop for lunch), and Vernon to Rouen.
World’s 1st Motor Race Begins
The festivities began on the morning of Sunday, July 22nd, 1894, in the Paris suburb of Neuilly. Scores of eager spectators watched as the cars lined up near the Porte Maillot in preparation for the final heat. Chief among the onlookers was internal combustion pioneer Gottlieb Daimler, whose engine was being used to power the Panhard & Levassor and Peugeot vehicles.
Shortly after 8 AM, the machines rumbled to life and the world’s first automotive competition got underway. As cars departed the starting area at 30-second intervals, fascinated spectators trailed alongside on horses, bicycles, and on foot.
Along the way, entire villages turned out to cheer and to shower the vehicles with flowers and fruit (not sure if they threw fruit on the cars). Families set up picnic tables at the side of the road so that they could gawp at the great monsters as they trundled by.
For some, it would be the first time they had ever seen a motor car. Onboard each car, in addition to the driver and passenger, was an official observer to determine whether the criteria for the first prize were met. As all the cars trudged along the route, it soon became apparent that the most powerful vehicle by far was the giant De Dion articulated steam tractor driven by Count Jules de Dion.
The field soon made its way into the outskirts of Paris, kicking up huge clouds of white dust in its wake. The race’s first casualty would come at 8.40 AM, when a steam-powered Serpollet broke an axle and was forced to retire. The rest of the drivers managed to negotiate the rough road and lumber up a steep hill in St. Germain.
The leaders covered the 30 miles to Mantes by 11 AM., de Dion showing the way to Georges Lemaitre in a Peugeot and Emile Levassor in a Panhard.
Upon reaching the Parisian suburb of Mantes sometime around noon, the entire field stopped for a 90-minute lunch break. The attempts at official timekeeping at Mantes were singularly chaotic.
After a leisurely midday meal, the drivers returned to their cars and, at the sound of a bugle at 1.30 pm, resumed the second leg of the journey into the French countryside.
Although most of the vehicles barely achieved speeds above 10 miles per hour, they proved a spectacular sight for the residents of the villages they passed. Many people had decorated their houses with flags. Some towns even fired off cannons to herald the arrival of the convoy.
Second Leg Of The Race
Most of the cars performed well during the second leg, but the race was not without incidents. Pedestrians, horses, and spectator cars often clogged the narrow roads, and reports later noted that seven dogs were run over and one cyclist injured as they competed for space with the racers.
The boiler on Mr. Scotte’s giant steam wagon eventually blew and injured its driver, and many competitors’ thin rubber tires were easily damaged or cut on rougher sections of road. Other drivers accidentally ran off the course.
It came as no surprise that Count Jules de Dion maintained his lead all the way to Rouen. He had the odd hair-raising moment along the way, once having to be hauled free by spectators after his vehicle became stuck on the road’s loose stone surface, and on another occasion taking a wrong turning and ending up in a potato field.
According to a correspondent for the British journal, The Engineer, while leading the race, the Count de Dion’s car “mistook the route and mounted a very steep hill, and in turning to descend again, went into a potato field, and aid had to be obtained to get it on to the road again.”
He finished in 6hr 48min at a commendable average speed of 11.66mph. Lemaitre arrived five minutes later in his Peugeot, followed by Doriot and then Paul Panhard and Emile Levassor.
Seventeen of the original 21 racers eventually completed the 79-mile journey, with most arriving on the Champs de Mars in Rouen in the early to late evening.
At the awards ceremony the following day, the judges from Le Petit Journal decided to split the first prize between the Peugeot and Panhard & Levassor cars, whose vehicles had demonstrated remarkable reliability.
The judges singled out Gottlieb Daimler’s engine for special praise, “The Daimler engine, developed by a skilled engineer from Württemberg; Mr. Daimler — who was present yesterday in Rouen to share in the triumph of his work — has turned petroleum or gasoline fuel into a practical solution.”
While Count Jules de Dion technically won the race, he only received the second prize. His steam-powered tractor required a passenger to serve as an onboard stoker (it needed two people to handle it — a driver to steer and a stoker to tend the engine), which meant it failed the “ease of operation” test laid out in the competition rules.
He was however praised for his ‘interesting steam tractor which developed a speed absolutely beyond comparison, especially when going uphill’.
An Era Of Motor Racing Begins
In the wake of the Paris-Rouen test, the city-to-city race became a staple of motorsports. 1895 brought the famous Paris-Bordeaux-Paris race, a 732-mile rally won by Paris-Rouen fifth-place finisher Emile Levassor. That same year also saw motor racing across the pond to the United States when Frank Duryea won a 54-mile race from Chicago to Waukegan and back again.
Other touring races followed around the turn of the century: Paris-Marseilles-Paris in 1896; Arona-Stresa-Arona in 1897; Berlin-Potsdam-Berlin in 1898 and Paris-Vienna in 1902. Cars and engines grew in sophistication along with the races, and by the early 1900s, drivers were regularly achieving speeds in excess of 80 miles per hour.
The white-knuckle pace of these later competitions made the “Le Petit Journal Competition for Horseless Carriages” look like a Sunday pleasure drive-by comparison, but the Paris-Rouen had been an important step in establishing the car as a practical form of transportation destined to supplant the horse and buggy.
On July 23rd 1894, the Le Petit Journal enthusiastically summed up the result of the race, “How can you travel other than in a motor car?”
And New York Times on Aug 8th 1894 covered the race with the headline — “Winners in the Road-Wagon Race”
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