The world’s first automobile race was held on July 22, 1894, with 17 of 21 participants covering a distance of 126 kilometers (78.3 mi) from Paris to Rouen, France. The Paris-Rouen Competition – also known as the Paris-Rouen Trials – not only paved the way for Le Mans, the Indianapolis 500, and all subsequent car races, but also heralded the beginning of the motor age by demonstrating the reliability of the automobile.
Writing under the pseudonym of Jean Sans Terre in the 19 December 1893 issue of Le Petit Journal, editor Pierre Giffard proposed a competition for “votiers sans chevo”, i.e. “horseless carriages”. The focus was not on speed, but on cars meeting the requirements of being “safe, easy to drive and economical to operate”.
More than 100 entries were received before the deadline of April 30, 1894, demonstrating various imaginative means of propulsion such as gravity and pendulum, as well as gas and steam. Ultimately, only 23 cars were ready in time for the final tests scheduled for July 19 and 20, 1894, of which 19 successfully completed their routes. Two more vehicles were declared qualified on 21 July, bringing the total to 21 official participants for Sunday’s race.
The competition started at 8 am in Port Mallot, Paris, in which a huge crowd was present. All vehicles were powered by either steam or internal combustion engines. One vehicle had a steering wheel, while the rest were operated with a rudder. Taking into account several stops—including a leisurely lunch in Mantes, the average speed of the vehicles was 11.6 miles per hour.
Count Albert de Dion, co-founder of the French automobile manufacturer De Dion-Bouton, pulling an open carriage with his 20-horsepower steam tractor, maintained a steady lead throughout the race – even after taking a wrong turn into a potato field at Egoville.
However, despite finishing first at 5:40 pm on the Champs de Mars in Rouen, finishing the race in 6 hours and 48 minutes, all judges agreed that De Dion’s tractor-trailer combination did not meet the competition requirements. Instead, the first prize of 5,000 francs (about $40,000 today) was shared equally between the French manufacturers Panhard & Levassor and Les Fils de Peugeot Frères, as they had most closely followed the ideals of the competition.
The real winner of the Paris-Rouen trials was the automobile industry itself. This competition not only marked an important milestone in automotive history, but also fired the public’s imagination and laid the foundation for the automobile’s acceptance as a reliable means of transportation. About a year later, in June 1895, the Paris–Bordeaux–Paris race was held, in which participants covered a route of 732 miles.
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