The Daily Telegraph - Revving up for the greatest classic rally
December 29, 2012

Our expert on China is planning to drive 7,600 miles from Beijing to Paris. With six months to go, she reports on her preparations.

It was 15 years ago when I was working as a news journalist in Beijing that I heard about the Peking-to-Paris Motor Challenge, one of the longest and toughest rallies undertaken in a classic car. The first race had taken place 90 years earlier in 1907 and was entirely off-road, participants travelling without passports or maps or recourse to garages en route.

Camels were used to transport petrol for the cars as competitors crossed Mongolia. The victor was an Italian prince who was pitted against – among others – a French fairground worker who had borrowed his car and persuaded rivals to give him their extra fuel. They were all vying for the prize of a magnum of champagne. It sounded like my kind of race.

News journalists based in China in the mid-Nineties were not handsomely paid and the costs – of building a car, of entering the race, of training and preparation – were prohibitive. I tried to secure sponsorship, but the world was a very different place then and no companies were thinking too hard about raising “brand awareness” in China. The opportunity passed by.

For years the Peking-to-Paris dream had been simmering in my soul. The idea intermittently came up in conversations about bucket lists. Then one evening in a bar in London I mentioned the rally to an old school friend, Mike Reeves. It turned out that he had studied car design and had a passion for fast cars. We promised each other that evening that we would enter the race in 2013.

Over the next few months we studied the terrain we would be travelling across from the Chinese capital to Paris. The race was to begin on May 28 at the Great Wall of China. The route would pass through the Gobi Desert, across the Mongolian grasslands, the Russian Steppes and over the Urals. From there it was to pass from Kiev to Kraków, from Salzburg to the Swiss Alps. All being well, 33 days after the start a procession of vintage and classic cars would motor down the Champs-Élysées and into the Place Vendôme.

We knew endurance was going to be more important than speed and that we needed a robust vehicle with a reliable engine and good ground clearance. The American-built cars of the Thirties and Forties were strong contenders, and we eventually decided on a Ford. Sturdy and tough, the Ford flathead V8 engine was extremely simple. It also had plenty of power. Bootleggers adored this type of motor, as did Bonnie and Clyde.

Mike scoured the internet and found the rolling shell of a 1940 Ford Coupé for sale in Michigan from an old man called Danny with a penchant for hotrods. We bought the car – or what was effectively a body and chassis – and shipped it to Britain. There was no engine or transmission, but our plan was to acquire the needed parts from a variety of sources – bucket seats from Italy, tyres from South Korea, a shifter from Texas and bumpers from California. Our car has been a year in the making. Last week we registered it and christened it Shiner, after the bootleggers who used this type of vehicle to transport moonshine.

We have six months before the start of the race and much preparation ahead of us. We need to put several thousand miles on the car to find out what works and what breaks. We need to hone our navigation skills and become au fait with our Garmin GPS. We need to become accomplished drivers on a range of surfaces, including gravel, sand, scrub, mud and Tarmac.

About 100 cars will be leaving Beijing next May, among them vintage Bentleys, classic Mercedes and Steve McQueen-style Mustangs. Ahead of us will be more than a month of driving, covering a distance of nearly 8,000 miles across nine countries. The prize is still a magnum of champagne – and, of course, the glory.

Peking to Paris essentials
More at peking2paris2013.com and facebook.com/peking2paris2013.
Follow Michelle on Twitter: @pekingparis2013