Pick of the Day
August 27th 1997
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"IT KEEPS GOING AND
GOING AND GOING... A rally apart: Don Jones,
Carl Schneider, and a red 1954 Convertible
on the 1997 Peking to Paris Motor Challenge"
Text by B.J. Bassett
Ms. Bassett is a freelance writer living
in Fortuna, California
As Printed in the Winter 1998-99
THE PACKARD CORMORANT
Issue Number 93
It’s a beautiful morning in the City of Light,
with a clear sky and cool temperature. For
the first time in the reenactment of the 1907
Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, the top is
down on a ’54 Packard convertible as it enters
Paris. The driver, a tired yet jubilant Carl
Schneider, shakes hands with his co-driver/navigator
Don Jones and shouts, "We’re here! We’re in
Paris! We made it!" Waving a huge American
flag and playing rock-and-roll music, they
have just completed the grueling forty-five
day Peking to Paris Motor Challenge.
The first "Great Race" (the Peking to Paris
Motor Challenge of 1907) was designed to show
what the automobile could do. Ninety years
later at the challenge’s reenactment, the
automobile still endures the hardest marathon
in the world.
Carl Schneider and Don Jones took the Peking
to Paris race a step further; they began their
around-the-world adventure in New York. The
first leg of their journey took two days,
twenty-two hours, and nineteen minutes and
ended in San Francisco. There was a send-off
in New York, with an appearance on the "Today
Show," and another send-off in San Francisco.
May different makes and models of cars participated
in the world-famous motor challenge, yet few
American teams or American cars entered. Carl
Schneider wanted to enter an American car.
He knew the Packard was durable and could
take the hardship and abuse it must endure
on this race. He chose to enter a Packard
with the last of the straight eight engines
because of its simplicity, and retro-fitted
a special air suspension. The durable ’54
was entered in the Classic Division. Schneider
knew it would do well on gravel roads, and
he had driven Packards before in other rallies.
The red ’54 convertible with its tan top was
shipped to China. Later it would be offloaded
onto docks on the shore of the Yellow Sea
and stored with the other vehicles in warehouses
and buildings.
Considered by some a rich man’s sport, the
Motor Challenge was a race for the strong.
Drivers faced obstacles and needed physical
and mental stamina to complete the journey.
They also needed resourcefulness. While preparing
for the start, Carl’s heart sank as he announced
to Don, "The battery is dead." False alarm!
They soon realized that the battery cable
had been removed for the safety purposes while
the Packard was in transit. Once the battery
cable was attached the convertible fired right
up. Before the race began, participants endured
long briefings. A recent landslide was reported
and, if not cleared in time, there was the
possibility of a 3,000-mile detour.
Rallying involves maintaining precise time
and distance records and having them verified
on a scorecard by event officials. Drivers
reported to a staff of fifty at 150 control
stations at the beginning and end of each
day and at intervals along the route.
A friendly international competition, the
Peking-Paris consisted of cars as diverse
as the drivers representing their countries.
There was everything from a chain-drive 1907
LaFrance fire engine to a 1967 Chevrolet pick-up
truck. The Motor Challenge spanned 15,000
kilometers across some of the most forbidding
terrain in the world. Drivers would experience
high altitudes, winter-like conditions, and
roads that might not even exist when they
got there. They would see people who rarely
saw visitors from other parts of the world.
With a Chinese license plate attached to the
Packard, and People’s Republic of China drivers’
licenses for Carl and Don, they were ready.
On September 6th, outside the city of Peking,
the cars were sent off in one-minute intervals
from the Great Wall of China. Ninety-six cars
from twenty-three different countries began
the journey. While it took Carl and Don fewer
than three days to drive across the United
States from New York to San Francisco, it
would take them two weeks to drive across
China.
One hundred thousand people lined the route,
crowding closer and closer as the Packard
crept along. Enthusiastic, curious Chinese
touched the Packard and Don and Carl, encouraging
them. Carl waved and called the Chinese greeting,
"Ni Hau." "It was like a great wall of people,"
he said later.
On the second day of the race the Packard
took a pounding, traveling over dirt roads
full of holes and dips which threatened its
undercarriage. Each day the Motor Challenge
became more and more relentless in its demands.
With a rapid change in altitude, carburetor
adjustments were necessary. All things considered,
the care performed very well. In rural China,
life is different. You see camels used as
transportation and donkeys or mules pulling
carts. One of the most incredible things Carl
and Don saw was a religious pilgrimage. People
crawled on their hands and knees along the
shoulder of the road to Lhasa, Tibet.
Some think that a rally is done entirely inside
the car, but a true rally driver spends as
much time under the car as inside it. The
driving occurs in all kinds of conditions
– heat, altitude, rocky roads, sometimes no
roads. The 1954 Packard was getting its team
down the road, but also beginning to show
signs of wear and tear. It had a broken manifold,
a broken gas gauge, and continual carburetor
problems. The on-board compressor (used to
maintain the air suspension system) was inoperative.
One day it took an hour to find air the tires.
But unlike others who were dropping out of
the Motor Challenge, this Packard was like
the Energizer Bunny – it kept going, and going,
and going. The Chinese were fascinated with
the race and the red Packard. It was the right
color for China, and they thought the graceful
pelican hood ornament was a Peking Duck! As
the cars ran through Inner Mongolia, authorities
declared part of the day a holiday and encouraged
people to come out and see the convoy pass.
The eighth day of the journey was one of the
most difficult and demanding. Somewhere in
China at an elevation of 12,600 feet, road
conditions consisted of mud, curves and ruts,
and paved sections had four-foot swells. Carl
remembers, "It was like riding on ocean waves."
The ninth day was no better: "Driving 200
kilometers in China is like driving a thousand
miles in the United States," Carl said. "The
’54 Packard was brutalized by the driving
conditions on the roads used primarily by
trucks in a vast frontier with few people
and spectacular scenery."
Keeping air in the tires, keeping the spark
plugs clean and the carburetor functioning,
were among the very basic things they struggled
with, but they were convinced that if anything
could be put through the conditions and succeed,
the Packard could.
By day eleven the ’54 was in the midst of
the field. It wasn’t the fastest car, not
the slowest. Don’s and Carl’s example was
the tortoise and the hare, and they were satisfied
to play the role of the tortoise as they proceeded
across the Himalayan mountain range. Here
the elevation rose to 18,000 feet.
The Packard and the other entries continued
to take a pounding. They traveled where few
passenger cars had been – from Lhasa, Tibet
to Katmandu, Nepal. As they drove deeper into
the Himalayas they found the living conditions
more severe, with children begging for food
along the route.
By the thirteenth day seven cars had retired
from the race. The Packard was running well,
but the undercarriage had taken a beating.
As much as they planned for extra ground clearance
with the air suspension system, it was unable
to hold air and the car usually sat lower
than ever. "The Packard had more use and abuse
in these two weeks than it had had in the
previous forty years of its life," Carl said.
"We made a decision when we reached the border
of Nepal that we were expecting too much of
the car to push on another five or six hours
to Katmandu. Out of necessity, we secured
a transport cargo truck. It was a remarkable
scene in the border town with fifty people
behind the 6,000-pound Packard, pushing it
up two planks onto the truck. I was behind
the wheel, and it seemed like the people were
actually lifting the car off the ground to
get in onto the truck."
In Katmandu the Packard received much needed
restoration. The steel plating underneath
the car, the gas tank and the drive shaft
were all removed in order to clean out blocks
of mud and to straighten out some of the plating
which was severely bent. The brakes, clutch,
timing and the carburetion all had to be given
attention in an effort to restore good running
condition for the rigors of the next part
of the race, which would take them through
Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Iran. At a cost
of $170 the Packard was once again roadworthy.
The surviving cars had now proven themselves,
but on the next leg of the race the drivers
and navigators would have to do likewise.
They faced heat, humidity and humanity, the
prospect of malaria, even tiger warnings!
The 1997 Peking to Paris Motor Challenge was
the first time westerners drove their own
cars through China, Tibet, Nepal, Pakistan
and Iran, and it was recorded in the Guinness
Book of Records.
The drivers of an Aston Martin struggled every
day to keep their highly tuned sports car
going, and were amazed at the indestructibility
of the 1954 Packard, which they kiddingly
dubbed "The Elvis Presley Car." Many thought
it was too big and heavy and would never make
the finish. Carl commented, "Well, here we
are in Pakistan and the Germans who were following
us through the mountains appreciated our being
in front of them because we graded the road
for them. We moved all the rocks with the
bottom of the car so they could come by on
a smoother road! Packards were engineered
for durability." Much later, going down modern
highways at 70 mph, Carl said, "The Packard
is still a pleasure to drive."
 As they neared Paris, an incredible
bond formed among the Motor Challenge participants
and they prepared for a bittersweet ending,
full of mutual respect and admiration. They
had endured and arrived at their destination.
Afterward the Packard was loaded onto an oceanic
transport trailer and sent across the Atlantic
to New York. Carl and Don drove it to Times
Square, completing their around-the-world
journey.
Carl Schneider and Don Jones reached their
goal, yet life is all about the journey and
not the ultimate destination. Don Jones achieved
a boyhood dream of traveling around the globe.
Carl Schneider always wanted to see the wonders
of the world. He discovered the Eighth World
Wonder in the people of the countries they
journeyed through – their friendliness, their
curiosity. Carl, Don and the red ’54 Packard
convertible experienced the rally of a lifetime.
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