American History Hit - The Race That Sold The Car To America

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

On a cold winter morning in February 1908, six cars lined up in Times Square, attempting to be the first to drive from New York to Paris, the long way round. Lindsey Lauren Visser tells Don how teams from the US, France, Italy and Germany attempted to complete the race, faced with adverse weather, a distinct lack of roads, and sabotage.Produced by Benjie Guy. Mixed by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's 1908 and we're in New York City in Times Square on a very cold February morning. Six automobiles. Well, maybe motor carriages is more the fitting term.

The invention's still in its early days. They are lined up. Their driving team seated, ready to set out on what will surely be the most ambitious competition any will ever undertake. A marathon race from New York City to Paris, France. The long way headed west. The occupants are bundled up in a freezing air. The cars have no roofs, windows, or windshields. They are crammed full of provisions for a journey calculated to last about a month.

Only for those who eventually complete the course, it will take a lot longer than that. Throngs of New Yorkers pack the streets. Reports put the number at $250,000. And as everyone grows impatient, the president of the local auto club seizes the starter pistol and fires. And they're off. It's the great race of man and machine against time, weather, terrain, and human sabotage in the days long before gas stations, or for that matter, paved roads. Decades before the first organized stock car races were held on the hard-packed beaches of

Daytona, Florida, before there was a brickyard in Indianapolis, before there was Le Mans, before Formula One, there was the Great Race, an epic motoring marathon that would challenge a group of international drivers and their custom-built cars to compete across the world from New York City to Paris, France. And if that sounds like a GPS fever dream, of course it was. And it was happening in 2008. The first year Henry Ford introduced the Model T, which would go on to make the automobile an ordinary part of American life. But this now fabled adventure race would be anything but. It was glamorous, exciting, exotic, daring, and absurd. But it was a huge headline maker that raised the bar for Americans on what it was possible to do in a lot. It was possible to do in a

a car. And it went a great distance, about 22,000 miles, in fact, towards shrinking the globe for a brand new century. It all started in New York. It kind of started in Buffalo. And so we've invited Buffalo historian Lindsay Lauren Visser to tell us all about it. Lindsay, welcome back to American History hit. Please start your engine. Thank you so much for having me back, Don. I'm excited to be here. So this is an incredible story. It's both kind of grand and goofy at the same time. I mean, And this is before there's NASCAR's Grand Prix circuits. You know, big-time organized car racing hadn't even been a thought yet. But there was quite a bit of car racing going on, especially in Europe, where the automobile was invented.

What was going to make this American race such a big deal? Well, it's so interesting that you say this, because yes, you're right. This is decades before we have real traditionally what we would think of organized car racing. But what's kind of critical to note is this is also decades before we have the infrastructure for cars, the way that we would assume. today. So when we talk about this race, we're talking about a race during a time period in which the vast majority of roads in America are not paved. There aren't gas stations around every corner that you can just refuel. The cars are not built to be able to do an endurance race of this scale or magnitude. There's no streetlights. There's no real infrastructure. There's no AAA. There's no

snow plows that are supposed to plow the roads for these cars and things. We're talking about a transcontinental, I should say transcontinental three times over, race that predates pretty much any infrastructure that would make anything like this possible. Yes, there's definitely a history of kind of car racing in Europe and even starting to catch on in America, but at this point, cars are still so much the hobby of the rich, right? So the average car, and especially I kind of looked at some of the figures from Buffalo because we had Pierce Arrow, we had ER Thomas, We had a lot of the major manufacturers before Ford kind of took over. The car during that time frame was between $6,000 and $12,000, which is about $180,000 to $360,000 today.

So it kind of puts it into perspective that this really had to be something you could afford to do. And most people just couldn't. And so it was really this hobby of the rich and it was very attractive, but it just didn't have a practicality to it yet. So who are the organizers of this particular race? Well, the New York Times in Le Mettein, which is a French newspaper, get it in their head that they want to outdo the previous year's Peking to Paris race. That one at least geographically makes a little bit more sense. There is a land route the entire way. And while that is an impressive feat, this was supposed to be twice as big, twice as arduous, and twice as exciting.

Who was competing? I mean, who are these racers? How many cars are we talking about? Initially, we get around 12 European teams who sign up to do this. Ultimately, there are only five from Europe that show up on the day, plus the American team, which we'll get to in a little bit. We have three teams that are going to be representing France that actually compete in the race. There's the Césaire Nadeon, there's the Motte Blanc and the De De Dion. Then there's the German Protoz and the Italian Zust. At this point, the race is supposed to take place from New York City by land all the way through the states to San Francisco, where the cars are going to briefly board a boat to go up to Alaska,

to cross Alaska by car, and this is where it gets really hairbrained. They're going to drive across the frozen bearing straight into Russia, cross into Russia, cross the entirety of Siberia, into the western portion of Russia, enter into Europe that way, and drive into Paris. Man, alive, this is insane. I feel like I have to keep reminding everybody that this actually happened because there's just so much absurdity that surrounds it. I mean, had any kind of global race happened at this point in time or not? So at this point, only nine people had ever driven across the United States. However, none of them had done it in winter, which, I mean, I feel like we're kind of jumping

ahead of ourselves here. But one of the things that's so critically important to this race is if you're going to drive across the Bering Strait, it has to be frozen, which means you have to do this during winter, which means you have to leave New York in a time frame in which you can reach the Bering Strait and have it still be frozen. So they're going to run this absolutely insane endurance race, 22,000 miles through the snow. No paved roads, no snow plows, no gas stations, no AAA. And my personal favorite, no car-sized roadmaps. They are navigating by compasses and celestial navigation.

There aren't directions. There's no place they can even stop to check. It's wild. They made a goofy madcap comedy of this back in the 60s with Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis, no wonder. Well, if you're going to do this race in winter, then why not get a team from Buffalo? Because you guys really know your winters up there.

Tell me about this Buffalo team and the car they're going to drive. It ended up being absolutely to our favor that the team from America is from Buffalo. It's 1908. All these European teams have entered this race, but the majority of the race, or at least a considerable enough portion of it, is going to go through America. President Theodore Roosevelt was a little bit of a wild man himself. Loved, loved, loved, loved the idea of this race. He was adamant that an American team had to participate.

So he personally gets involved in trying to get somebody who's willing to do this. So he calls all of the major manufacturers. Most of them think this is absurd. They don't really want to participate in this. ER Thomas, the motor factory out of Buffalo, New York, agrees at the last minute, except it's very much last minute. They don't specially design a car for this. They just pull one off of the assembly line that's supposed to get delivered to somebody's house in a couple of weeks. They have almost no time to make any special modifications to it.

I think in the end, all they were really able to do is add a couple of extra fuel tanks so that it could hold 125 gallons because, again, they have to go long distances without being able to stop for gas. I should also mention, because it's 1908, these cars don't have heaters. They don't have windshields. Most of them don't have covers or tops. I think they're able to get a kind of canvas convertible style top to try to make it a little bit more comfortable for them. So they don't have any of the outfitting that you would anticipate to be able to do anything remotely like this. And in particular, the Thomas Flyer has even less than some of the other ones. The German protoz was actually constructed by order of the kind of.

to run this specific race, so it was very carefully designed to be able to accommodate this. Thomas Flyer, not so much. The average lifespan of a car during this time period comfortably would be about 10,000 miles. The race is 22,000 miles. So to try to make this happen, in addition to providing the car, ER Thomas selects one of their best mechanics off of the floor and basically says, how about you go ahead and run this race with Monty Roberts, who's one of these really famous up-and-coming drivers in this new auto sport that's emerging. But we need somebody who can make the car run. So George Schuster is selected. He's a

Buflonian, knows the cars inside and out. He worked his way up from the assembly line into being a test driver. He actually is the guy who would accompany the cars on delivery and teach people how to use their new cars. So he knew every element of the car from construction to how it would drive. So he agrees on one condition, and that is that ER Thomas will offer him a job for the rest of his life. No questions asked if he agrees to do this. I think of these cars in this period of time as being really these romantic, gorgeous museum pieces now. But they're the last machines you would take out of the city that you live in because they're going to break down constantly. How could they even possibly think that this would work when you're crossing, I mean, basically the American frontier.

after you get past Illinois. It's just an amazingly wild idea. I don't even know how to really conceive of it when you consider that I don't even know where you get any gas, right? To try to even make this possible, they had to have different kind of teams set up gas along the route. But again, we're talking about gas and buckets here. This isn't gas station stuff. So essentially, all they really had to navigate this race was a timetable of where, they were supposed to go and how long approximately it was supposed to take for them to get there.

Again, they know they're going west, not that that's the most helpful thing in the world. They know that they're supposed to hit certain cities along the road, but there's no interstate. There's no signs. They're kind of on their own to do this. So what you end up seeing is that a lot of the cars kind of caravan and follow each other. And then it kind of doesn't really feel like a race as such in this first half because you just couldn't. But most of the organizers, or at least the participants, really felt like this was an impossible task. I think it's ER Thomas who says something along the lines of, I don't think they're going to make it to Chicago, let alone Siberia, because it was just so unfathomable. And I think especially for the Americans, this is something that's unlike

anything that we have ever attempted to do. So tell me about the start of the race. I mean, this is a huge event in New York City. It's the middle of February. Everybody's packed up and they're coats and scarves, but they're in Times Square, and a lot of people are there. So let me paint a picture for you of how this looks. You've got six cars. Morehead signed up, but it was only the six that showed up because I think the others knew this just wasn't going to work. These cars, they don't have windshields, they don't have anything. They are piled high, Beverly Hillbilly style with all of the things that they are going to need to be able to make this race.

I think one of the French cars has a portable kitchen that they have packed up in there. They've got tents. they've got everything, right? So you've got a picture, everybody's bundled up because they don't have windshields. The cars aren't closed. There's no heaters. So the pictures of everybody in the cars are just absolutely, like, wrapped up in several layers of things. You can barely see them over the hats and scarves and things that they're wearing.

This huge crowd assembles in Times Square. The race is supposed to start at 11. It doesn't start on time. Finally, out of frustration, the president of the automobile club, grabs the golden pistol, shoots it off. The race starts. just days before this, a major blizzard came through the northeast. When it snows, it can snow. So the cars are immediately, as soon as they get outside of New York City,

dealing with eight-foot snowdrifts and having all sorts of issues, right? Within 96 miles of New York City, we have our first casualty. The Cesar Nidon, which was arguably even less equipped for this race than the Thomas Flyer, ends up having to call it, they break down, they're not enjoying any part of this, they're out. So that leaves us with two cars from France, a German car, an Italian car, and the Thomas Flyer from America. To keep things a little bit easier, I'm just going to kind of refer to them by their car names because it could get a little tricky with all the people involved. So as they're making their way up New York State, they are immediately realizing the snow is going to be a huge issue.

So the flyer team has the mechanic going out. He's like taking a pole to try to push down and figure out where the ground is even relative to the snow. they have to put planks down so that the cars can drive over wooden planks to try to get over these snow-covered roads. I mean, when you think about it, it is literally just a caravan of all of these cars trying to make their way up in New York State. And it's just a mess. It's snowy. The cars aren't equipped for this. They are breaking down all the time.

I think by the time that they start to get to Buffalo, they had their best day of travel, which was 110 miles and seven hours, making it 13 miles an hour that they were able to make. That was their best day in New York State. So, I mean, compared to traditional travel at this point, that's still pretty fast. The car is this whole new daring thing, and they look good. I'm interested in what this represents at this point in America. You know, you have this massive race starting out. What do people know about cars at this point? 1908 is the year that Henry Ford releases his assembly line constructed and therefore affordable

automobile. This whole proliferation of this idea hasn't yet taken place in America. So anytime people are seeing cars, there's always some rich dandy driving them at this point. Everybody's still on horse and buggies in those days pretty much. This would have been quite an amazing adventure for people to imagine themselves into. It is. And it's fascinating because you're absolutely right. We haven't seen the democratization of the car yet. In fact, that's going to come after the race. And it is almost like the perfect confluence of the race happening that created that. this new interest and this new fascination with the car, and then the availability of the car. The two in conjunction really take off, and that's what I think helps to give rise to our car

culture in America. But what's so fascinating is that you really do still have almost two distinct camps at this point. The people who think the car is the coolest thing. It's a new technology. It's amazing. And then the people who absolutely hate it and think that this is stupid and are actively trying to sabotage the teams en route because they hate it.

because they hate cars. And so there are people who are just utterly opposed to this. Also, there's all sorts of cultural issues here. The Americans were a lot more willing to help out the American team in some places. They would help shovel out the roads and the roots. But then they would go back and, like, fill them back in so that the Europeans would have to go and get out of their cars and shovel for themselves. Like, things start to go sideways very quickly as we make our way past Buffalo through the Midwest in the Great Lakes region. It's a bit of a mess. At one point, the flyer team ends up having to use a team of 14 Clydesdale horses. So we're back to the horses anyway.

But they have to use a team of 14 Clydesdale horses to try to get the car through a particularly egregious snowdrift. And when the other teams complain and they're like, wait a minute, there's only literally one rule to this race, which is the cars have to make it of their own power, the entire journey. It turns out they're not actually doing exactly the same thing, except they have to pay for the horses. I think the protos has the record of using a team of 17 horses to get through, but they had to pay for the health that they were getting. And it actually got so bad that at one point, the French team ended up writing a letter to the Chicago Automobile Club, asking them to try to help change public opinion and public sentiment about the foreign teams. And so they passed the letter along to the Chicago Tribune, who in turn published the letter word for word. And what they said is, we are discouraged. The note began. The peasants demand $3 per mile for helping us. Here at New Carlisle, they charged $5 each to permit us to sleep on the ground. Peasants along the way have filled up the road dug out by leading cars so as to help the Thomas car. They make us hire as many horses as they please so they can get as much money out of us as they can. We are broke and disgusted. Want you to intervene in our protection. Await response. Would it be possible to influence public opinion to aid us? Suffice to say, it did not have.

have the impact that they were hoping. How long does it take them to get across the country? So originally, the prescribed route was supposed to take them 22 days to get from New York City to San Francisco. In the end, it takes 49 days. That seems pretty speedy when you're going 13 miles an hour. Well, when you consider, yeah, it's definitely better than you would have thought, but also completely outside of what they had anticipated.

They ran into problems all the time. I mean, the cars are breaking down pretty much nonstop. Having a mechanic on the American team was incredibly beneficial, but they would keep the cars running for up to 15, 20 hours a day. In some parts, that comes a little bit later, but especially at this part, they would pretty much race from 8 in the morning until 8 at night, and then they would try to repair the cars, go get additional supplies, then kind of map out what they were going to do for the next day. It's also kind of crazy, but this is a time before even antifreeze, so they have to manually drain the radiators every single night and then refill them. Like, these are little stupid things that we take for granted that just didn't exist yet. And so when we're thinking about all the things that would have been required to just move this car across the country, absolutely insane. So they start resorting to all sorts of chaotic methods to try to cross the country. At one point they start driving on train tracks, which again, the Thomas car kind of got a little bit of extra support from the American rail companies who actually gave them train status on the tracks.

It didn't protect them all the time. They very nearly got hit by a train at several points. But other teams started to try to do the same thing. At one point, the Motoblan actually just breaks down. And their driver gets it in his head that he's going to ship the car from where they are, which I want to say, is Illinois, all the way to San Francisco. So basically what ends up happening is they put it on this train car. They load it up.

They try to disguise the fact that it is, in fact, the very famous French Royce car trying to traverse the United States. And one of the journalists realizes what's going on and tries to set up a tripod to take a picture of it. And the driver comes out and he's like, no, no, no, no, no, you can't take this picture. You can't take this picture. The photographer ends up snapping a shot.

The car owner is so embarrassed by this whole situation. he sends a telegraph, says, sell the car, we're out of the race, you're done. So with that, we have another team that drops. Later on, the German protos ends up in a very similar situation where they have a broken part. They end up having to get on a train and have the car shipped. Granted, it's a much shorter distance. And at this point, there is some actual question as to whether or not this particular maneuver is legal. So they don't disqualify them, but they end up actually giving them a time handicap on the back end.

So even if the German car were to cross the finish line first, they end up having a 15-day handicap against them. So if another car were to finish the race within that 15-day window, they would not have won. So by the time the remaining cars have reached the end of our continent, the other side of the country, the Americans are actually ahead, and they stay the course and head for Alaska. But that's when things go awry. As if they haven't already gone awry, but yes, it does manage to get worse. So the Americans had built up about a 10-day lead. They get up to Alaska. They're excited to go figure out what's going on. As I mentioned before, the race was supposed to take 22 days. It took twice as long. So that meant that Alaska was actually

weather-wise, a little bit closer towards spring, and you were starting to get some melting and some thawing. So the weather pattern that they were kind of anticipating up in Alaska wasn't really an accurate thing anymore. The upper layer of snow was not going to be able to support the cars and the weight of the cars. So basically, they get up there and they realize the only way they're going to be able to get the cars across Alaska to the Bering Strait, which at this point may or may not even be frozen, unclear, is to disassemble the cars and put them on dog sleds. At which point, thank God, the race committee was like, okay, that is a bit too far on a race that has no rules and nothing makes sense. They did at least manage to agree that that was beyond the pale. So they say,

okay, we're going to skip that whole part. We're going to send the American team back down to Seattle. They'll catch a steamer and we'll ship them off to Japan. They'll start the race from Japan and we'll keep going from there. The problem is in the meantime, the German team, the Italian team, and the remaining French team also make it to the West Coast. They get on a faster steamer and end up in Japan while the Americans are still waiting for their boat to arrive. So there's a bit of a time difference now, too. Wow. Are there like race officials in the cars? How is this even monitored? So there's no race officials in the car. The officials are kind of monitoring their progress. They're sending telegrams back and forth. At one point,

The American team even had homing pigeons that they were trying to use to send messages back and forth, but apparently they turned into Siegel bait, so they stopped using them. It really was, as soon as you got to a town, you checked in, you did the best you could, and then the race team would kind of adjust from there. But the communication and the time lag becomes a really big issue in the second half of the race when the cars are really starting to break down. And now parts need to be shipped into these crazy Siberian cities that they had never. ever heard of before. How long that's supposed to take is a huge issue as well. I'll be back right after this short break with more from Lindsay Lauren Visser. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on not just the Tudors from History Hit, I'm dusting down my magnifying glass to investigate some of history's most notorious murders

and brutal crimes. Was it a quarrel, or was the brilliant playwright Christopher Marl actually murdered in that Depford Inn. Was Amy Dudley, wife of Elizabeth I first favourite Robert, pushed down a flight of stairs to her death? Were the Gies, that great French family, actually bloodthirsty murderers, who secured their power through ruthlessness and violence? And what's the truth about the Hungarian noblewoman

who allegedly killed hundreds of young women? Join me, but not on an empty stomach, for not just the Tudors from History Hit. wherever you get your podcasts. It would be one thing to drive to Alaska for me today, never mind a car in 1908, but then to decide to take the entire contest across the Pacific Ocean and restart it in Vladivostok in Russia

and then drive all in Paris is another level altogether. Yes. And when they get to Vladivastok, the Russians really paint a welcoming picture. They basically tell the teams, this is a terrible idea. you shouldn't do this. We have mosquitoes the size of locusts. We have roaming gangs of robbers. We've got mud like you wouldn't believe, basically telling them that it's plague, pestilence, Manchurian tigers, famine, rain, all of these crazy things. They basically welcome them and they're like,

how about you just put the cars on the new Trans-Siberian Railroad? And then you can start your little race when you get back to Europe. And the cars are like, no, we have gone. gone this far, we're going to do it. The race committee tells them they have to do it. It is what it is. So, unlike the North American leg, where they were at least able to kind of set up stations where there were opportunities to get more fuel, in Siberia, they can't do that. So there's immediately a shortage of gas. So the De Dion team is the last remaining French team at this point. They get it in their head that they are going to try to make a deal with either the Italian team. team or the American team, where they will give the entirety of their gas supply to one of them

on condition that their driver gets to continue the race with that team. And the Americans and the Italians were kind of like insulted by this because they felt like they were being bribed centrally. And so Schuster wants nothing to do with it. George Schuster's the driver of the American team at this point because Monty Roberts, the very glamorous, very handsome driver, ends up leaving so that he can go compete in the French Grand Prix. So now it's just George Schuster who is doing double duty as mechanic and full-time driver. He says absolutely not. It's really unclear what the Italians work out, but what's very clear is that the French will not offer the German team their gas supply because it would not look good to have the French helping the Germans. So instead

they give their gas to the Italian team and the De Dejean is out of the race and the Italians at the same time find out that their funding is cut as well. So now they're stuck in Vladivostok trying to figure out are they going to even be able to continue in the race? The Protos and the flyer end up taking off. Again, they have this weird recalculation of the amount of time that's actually supposed to be allocated to each team because they're all starting from Vladivastok at the same time. The Protos has a handicap of 30 days,

and the Italians have a handicap of 15 days because of the whole Alaska debacle. Okay, so this race really divides into two. We've been across America. Now they have crossed the Pacific Ocean with their cars, because the Bering Sea did not freeze, and therefore they couldn't cross that straight. And when they arrive in Russia, how many cars do we have and who's ready to go? So arriving in Russia are four cars.

You have the last remaining French team, which is the Didion. You have the Italian Zust, the German protoz, and the Thomas Flyer, which is the American team. And at that point, do they just turn over their engines and off they go? Do they restart the whole race as a part two? So actually, it's a really good question because there's two lines of things. thought on how they can do this. Initially, what they were going to do is deposit all of the cars in Vladivostok and say, okay, we're going to discount all of the shenanigans that happened in North America. Everybody's got a clean slate. Go ahead. Start the race again. Except the American team is

pretty outraged by this. And E.R. Thomas, who's back in Buffalo, says, absolutely not. We had a 10-day lead. We were the only ones who actually followed the race course up to Alaska and did what we were supposed to do. And now we're getting penalized for doing that. Had we just gotten on the boat, we'd be 10 days ahead of everybody. So the race committee does agree that that is true. And then they count for the time that they were waiting for the boat and everything else. So they afford the American team a leeway. And then on top of that, they penalize the German team for their use of the train when they shipped the car. Because again, it was against the rules, but it was vague enough and short enough that rather than pulling them out of the race entirely, they opted to just do this.

I want to see that rule book that they're all following. That's insane. The rules are made up and there's no way that they can keep track of them at this point. How long has this race gone on so far? At this point, I couldn't even tell you the number of days, but I do know the total number of days is 169. And that's continuous travel. So leaving Vladivostok, they are all supposed to, like I said, have that clean slate at least of everybody's going to be starting at the same time. So the night before they're supposed to start, the French team makes a proposition to the American team and the Italian team, not the German team because that wouldn't be good for the French to make this offer to the Germans. They don't want that. Basically, because of the fact that there is literally no gas anywhere to be found,

they offer the remainder of the De Dion supply to either the Italians or the Americans on condition that the team is allowed to ride along to Paris to continue the race, even though they're leaving their car behind. The Americans want absolutely nothing to do with it, and it's unclear how they managed to negotiate it, but the Italians end up with the gas supply, but leave the French behind. So the race is supposed to go on, except for the part where the Italians then get stuck in Vladivostok, because they lost their funding, so now they have to figure out how they're going to pay for the rest of the race. So they get an extra kind of disadvantage and leg behind before they realize that everything's fine and they're allowed to continue on with the race. Meanwhile, the Americans

are pissed at each other. You know, Monty's hit the road and Schuster's left to do this thing alone, or is there a larger team than that? There are other drivers, except Schuster has just kind of decided that he is putting this entire race on his shoulders. So he is the sole driver of the car. He is mechanic, driver, navigator, everything. And the other members of his team are kind of like, come on, we can help out, we'll take

turns. And he's like, nope, I am driving. And I'm going to keep doing this. and this is my race now. So he ends up exhausting himself and trying to do this. But he is, in the end, the kind of backbone of the American team, if you will. So the course through Europe will go from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg, Berlin, and then finally to Paris, right? Correct. So these guys are now on their home turf now. Are they getting Europeans to help them and Americans are dealing with adversity? Well, yes, but while they're in Russia, everybody is in trouble.

Nobody speaks the language. Nobody's really being helped. And to make matters worse, I can't even describe to you the ridiculousness geographically of the route that they end up on. So there's a road out of a lot of Ostok, a paved road. Okay? This is wild. Everybody thinks that they're having a fever dream, that there's an actual paved road out of Russia, right? So they get on the road, they take off, they're making great time. Four miles later, they end up in a swamp. The road leads directly into a swamp. So the protos is the first one to hit the swamp. They have to get pulled out of it. The Americans come along.

They end up helping getting them out. They take a different route. The Americans end up in a bog. So then they have to get fished out of this bog. And this just keeps happening and happening and happening. The conditions are terrible. The cars are getting stuck. They don't speak the language.

They have to go walk and try to find people to help them pull them out of these conditions. It's population-wise a lot different. geographically it's a lot different and the language barriers are hurting everybody. There are moments where they're trying to navigate, they don't speak the language, what little bit of geographic knowledge they have, they don't really understand because these are cities and names that they can't even read, let alone know where they are on a map, right? Because our alphabet is we're familiar with, this is the Cyrillic alphabet. So even if there is a sign that says welcome to Cheetah, they're not going to be able to read it,

right? So there's all these issues that they're dealing with. And they keep getting lost because, again, they're just going west. That's all they've got at this point is just go west. No signs. Nothing. So at this point, we have three cars, the Germans, the Italians, and Americans rolling into France. I assume this is like the Tour de France,

you know, of people lining the roads and watching this strange event heading past them. Where are we at as we approach to the finish line? So there was a moment back in Russia where the American team overtook the German team and they almost, almost cinched

the lead and then they got lost. And so in the end, it's actually the German team that arrives in Berlin first. And Berlin is the first stop. So the streets of Berlin are crowded and they're screaming and they are thrilled because they think that their team has won because nobody knows that there's a 30-day handicap up against the Germans. So the Germans are celebrating. They're having a great time. The German team drives through Berlin. They were going to stay a little longer when they heard that the American team was on the outskirts of Germany. They took off. So they They make it to Paris. Okay, so take me to the finish line.

We have three teams coming in, the Germans, Italians, and Americans. Who's going to win this thing? Well, it's kind of an interesting question. The first car that's going to arrive in Europe is actually going to be the German protos. It was so close. There was a moment in Russia where the flyer overtook the protos. But in the end, it was the protos that managed to make it to Berlin first. They make it to Berlin on July 24th.

And the Germans think that they've absolutely won. They are over the moon. When the Protos finds out that the flyers on the outskirts of Germany, they take off to go directly to Paris. So on July 26th, the Proto arrives in Paris. And the French are a lot more tepid about their welcome to the Germans because they know about this differential of time. So as long as any of the other teams, but especially the Flyer, arrives within 30 days, they've won. And if the Italian team arrives within the next 15 days, they will have won. So technically speaking, just because the Germans are the first to arrive in Paris does not mean that they have won the race.

So instead, what they do is they kind of do a nice reception for them, but it's a cold buffet, as they say. And so they wait. And just a couple of days later, the flyer does actually arrive in Paris. And it's this wonderful, beautiful moment of all of these people. They turn out. They're so excited. They're cheering and they're screaming for the American car. And over the din of the crowd, police sirens.

And at first, Schuster thinks to himself, okay, they're probably here to control the crowd. Mm-mm. They gesture pretty quickly to have the flyer pull over. Turns out, because the flyer does not have a headlight and they are driving in Paris at night, they are driving illegally. And so the police tell them they can't continue. And so absolutely, like, apoplectic. Schuster, having just completed 169 days of continuous driving, is like, what?

So there's a guy on a bicycle, and the bicycle has a headlight on it. So he grabs the bicycle, puts it in the front seat of the flyer, and boom, instant headlight. It's enough to pacify the police, and they're able to continue on the race, and they manage to make it to the headquarters of Limitone, where they are officially declared the winners. They strap the bicycle to the side of the car? Yes, they do. So the Thomas Flyer wins this race in Paris with a bicycle strapped to the side of the car, and they are cheered and welcomed, and they win this massive race.

What's the upshot of all of this? I mean, what do they get for winning? A 1,400 pound trophy. Well, I would venture to say there's more. First of all, a lot of newspapers were sold. That was a big goal of this thing, I guess, between the start and the finish. But it's really also the beginning of familiarity with long-distance travel available for cars. It really has an impact in that regard.

Also, this is years before, you know, 1917 and the arrival of American troops in World War I. I mean, there's been a lot of Americans coming over on ships, but never in an automobile. This is a first kind of international experience for a lot of people in terms of the Americans. Absolutely. This race completely changes people's perceptions of cars. Now all of a sudden there's a sense of durability to them. The fact that they were able to complete this race, that they could go through conditions like Siberian swamps and bogs and northeast winter's and the snow, all of a sudden it goes from being these kind of, oh, on a nice day, their rich will take their car out for a little drive into actually these could be really

dependable means of transportation. So now it shifts the perception. It makes it more fascinating and people tend to want to learn more about cars in a way that they hadn't before. So that's why I think the confluence of this race paired with the fact that later that same year, Henry Ford does release a more affordable model of car, now all of a sudden there's a market for it, because before that, there really wouldn't have been because they were just viewed as being so superfluous and indulgent. Whereas now, imagine what a car could do. It can do things that a horse never could, right? In 1912, you actually get the first transcontinental highway, and the route is Times Square to San Francisco. So if that doesn't tell you the lasting impact of the race,

nothing else will. As far as the international component, I think it absolutely made it clear that the American car manufacturing industry was absolutely on par with anything coming out of Europe, which I think was another really big thing. Europe had kind of carved out their car culture and being, as you had mentioned before, more of the motorsport center than the United States was. But in the end, it's an American machine with American drivers who end up winning the race by a 26 stay margin, which is still to the stay the longest margin of any automotive competition, which obviously you're never going to see anything quite like this again. I hope not. It's a little crazy. And there's another episode to be done on the effect of the Model T and the way that

Americans start living outside of cities and the development of the suburbs, not to mention car camping, which comes very soon in the lineage of the American automobile, which is crazy. It's amazing. What an impact has. What happened to the flyer company? Unfortunately, even though they had an enormous amount of success following the race. The Ford company ended up making the Model T so much more affordably than a lot of the other companies could compete with. They ended up having some serious financial losses, and I want to say by 1913, they end up closing. So George Schuster, the mechanic, does go back to being an employee at the Thomas factory. He gets picked up by Piercero, which is another major car manufacturer in Buffalo. But in the 1920s, he ends up opening up his own car dealership.

and so he kind of goes in a different direction. So the car itself ends up auctioned off when the Thomas company goes under. So it kind of disappears for a little while, and it's not until 1964 when it's purchased by Bill Hara, that it ends up being resurrected as the car that won the race. And George Schuster's actually still alive at that point, and he's very skeptical of this and doesn't think that it's the same car. So he personally goes to verify the authenticity of this,

and he is shocked to see still some of those crazy on-the-fly repairs that he had done on the car that you could still very clearly see. So he knew immediately that it was the car. So it ended up on display in the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada. But I am so happy to say that it is traveling right now and that it is in Buffalo. I'm so excited about this. It's at our local Pierce Arrow Museum. So I will absolutely be checking that out. But it is touring the country right now on a commemorative visit.

of some of the locations that the car traveled through during the original race. What a wild story and a proud one for Americans, but also kind of quaint in its own sort of way. Thank you very much for taking us through it. Thank you. A 169-day race we covered in a half an hour. We'll see again on American History Hit. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit.

I hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to like, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you next time. This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sound.