Re-enactments
Several races have been held to re-enact the event, including the Great Auto Race of 1908 which raced from New York west to Paris (by sea for part of the way). During most of the twentieth century other re-enactments could not be held because of the establishment of the USSR after the 1917 Russian Revolution until glasnost in the early 1990s racers were again allowed on this race.
In 1990 the London To Peking Motor Challenge was held, which raced in the opposite direction as the original race, from London to Beijing. In 1997 there was "The Second Peking to Paris Motor Challenge" made from 94 vintage cars which went a more southern route through Tibet, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece and Italy, which was won by British Phil Surtees and John Bayliss driving a 1943 Willys Jeep. Rosie Thomas, a British novelist, took part in this and funded her team's car by writing a fascinating book detailing her gruelling but exhilarating rally experience ('Border Crossing', ISBN 1-86049-811-6 ).
On April 18, 2005 a 1973 Fiat 500 linked Bari, Italy, to Beijing in a 16,000-kilometre (9,900 mi) journey across the whole Russia and passing through Vladivostok. The route was partially similar to the original one. Driven for 100 days by Danilo Elia and Fabrizio Bonserio, the old and tiny car was followed along its journey by newspapers and television from all over the world. After the long journey Elia wrote a book entitled La bizzarra impresa (ISBN 88-7480-088-6), in Italian, also available in German by the National Geographic Deutschland (Echt Abgefahren, ISBN 978-3-89405-834-0).
On May 15, 2005 five cars led by Lang Kidby departed Beijing for Paris retracing the original route with very similar cars to the originals; a 1907 Spyker, a 1907 and a 1912 De Dion-Bouton, a 1907 Itala and a Contal Cycle-car replica. This journey was televised by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in a four-part documentary series entitled Peking to Paris. The show was hosted by Warren Brown, one of two drivers on the Itala and a cartoonist with Sydney newspaper The Daily Telegraph. The Australian crew (driving westward) ran across the Italian Fiat 500 (driving eastward) in a non-planned meeting, somewhere around Krasnojarsk, Russia.
In 2007 the Endurance Rally Association staged a rally to celebrate the centenary of the original 1907 race. Unlike the 1997 event, also staged by Philip Young, which took a southerly route, this event followed more closely the route taken by Prince Borghese in 1907 in the winning Itala. From Beijing competitors went north to the Mongolian border at Zamyn Uud, and as with his original route, north to Ulaan Bataar. The route then went west across Mongolia, crossing the Russian border at Tsagaannuur through Siberia to Moscow, on to St Petersberg (where Prince Borghese attended “a great banqet”) and then through the Baltic States to finish in Paris. 126 veteran, vintage and classic cars took part, the oldest being a 1903 Mercedes. The major challenge of the rally proved to be Mongolia and the Gobi desert with no conventional roads, merely rutted tracks at best. Despite this, no fewer than 106 crossed the finishing line. The rally covered 10,000 miles in 36 days.
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