PEKING TO PARIS


In ten half-hour documentary episodes we follow video-diarists in five antique cars as they race against 130 others for more than 7,000 miles from China to France. Presenter-director Jack Pizzey goes with them and pulls their stories together in a vivid mix of travel, adventure, wit and grit.

Starting from the Great wall near Beijing we drive north across the frontier into Mongolia and straight into the Gobi Desert. We are following in the tyre-tracks of five reckless adventurers of 1907 – the victorious Prince Borghese and his rivals in the first Peking-to-Paris race. They got into trouble in the Gobi and pretty soon so do we. Soft sand grabs our cars by the axels and then more comes blasting through the air as a sandstorm and we bend double, screwing up our eyes and envying the camels who can close their nostrils.

This is the first time in a hundred years that classic cars have raced across Mongolia and we find out why when the whole vast country turns out to be as tough as the Gobi.  We’re on what is called an endurance rally and endurance is key in this land of bone-shaking tracks and often no tracks. Cars are broken and left behind with their drivers fending for themselves, and the camps - for those who get to them – are windswept and sometimes freezing. But there is a great spirit among the men and women of the new Great Race, a camaraderie that laughs at hardship, and our mantra becomes “a bad day on the race is better than a good day in the office.”

After eleven days crossing Mongolia we’re into Siberia which, in this summer, is mild and lush green, and we’re threading our way through miles of birch trees and tall grass along a string of provincial towns: Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia; Omsk where Dostoesvsky was imprisoned and flogged nearly to death; Tyumen where Lenin’s embalmed body spent WWII far from the frontline and where Irving Berlin was born;  Ykaterinberg where the Czar and his family were famously massacred in the Revolution at a site where repentant Russians have now built the Church of the Spilt Blood; and on to Moscow where everyone seems to be trying to fleece us – well, we must look like wealth-on-wheels even if we are having to struggle to keep our old dream-machine cars going. St.Petersburg dazzles all who see it for the first time but many of us spend the days under oily differentials and filigreed exhausts.

Then we’re across another frontier into Estonia and the other Baltic states, and the weighty “niet” of Russia is replaced by the breezy “can do” of countries that have thrown off the Soviet yoke in a way that Russia seems unable to. And we’re racing now on winding tracks past pines and lakes towards Poland with garages capable of fixing even some of our most shattered cars, and then into Germany and finally France and Paris where Prince Borghese’s reputation takes a knock and, in a way you couldn’t invent, Charles Godard, a driver who was wronged on the 1907 race, is spectacularly avenged. After five weeks on the road the Great Race has, says one of our drivers perched high on a mighty red La France, been the adventure of a lifetime.

Episode 1: Great Wall, Great Challenge
From the Great Wall on the edge of Beijing (Peking), 130 or so dream- machine cars rumble off towards Mongolia.  Some are a hundred years old or more, and the youngest is nearly forty. Ahead are nearly 8,000 miles of rough roads to Paris. Why are they doing this? Because a hundred years ago five madmen did it and four of them made it to Paris, led by Prince Scipione Borghese in a 7-litre 1907 Itala. 

Focusing on five video-diarists, director-presenter Jack Pizzey (who took part in the 1997 P2P) is here for the long run to tell the story of a modern-day epic. By the end of Day 1 of the 35 which the rally will need to reach Paris, some cars are already in trouble but most make it to the city of Datong where, in bed in a comfortable hotel, one of our diarists, diminutive Michele from Manhattan, checks the thread-count in the cotton sheets and shudders at the thought of the coming nights in sleeping bags and tents. Yes tents! Ugh!.

Episode 2: To The Land of Yurts
On the trail of Prince Borghese and the heroes of the 1907 race which put the motorcar on the map as a serious way of getting about, our video-diarists in their classic cars pause at the Yung-gang caves which were carved with countless Buddhas centuries ago, and then it's north through sandy hills and villages, bumping horribly sometimes over potholes but exuberant in the sunlight.

A 1903 Mercedes pulls powerfully up the hills, its crew looking like bank-robbers in the welding masks they've chosen as motoring wear. The Geordie Lads in their 1934 Lagonda are musing about Chinese women, the Itala Boys' car is already playing up but they're not phased - trouble seems to be like champagne to them and they're going to spend most of the next five weeks high on trouble.      

Episode 3: Ten Million Speed Bumps
The Peking racers wake up in a Chinese border town and head for the frontier. Bob of the Geordie Lads says a sentimental goodbye to a Chinese cop who took him out last night on a memorable round of the bars and clubs. The Rally Director warns that once we cross into Mongolia, there's  no turning back because all of us have only single-entry visas, and then suddenly it's the Gobi Desert. 

On the edge of this vast nowhere presenter Jack Pizzey pauses to show how, in 1907, Prince Borghese could navigate here and then everyone's racing across terrain that’s like ten billion speed bumps. This is car-breaking stuff and in the juddering cabins of their cars, our diarists gasp and groan and sometimes squeal. Crunch, bang, slam, boing, whamdunkk!

Hold onto your seats! Episodes 4 – 10 to follow….