A 1929 pre-war Buick Doctor’s Coupé
People often ask what car I am driving to Paris, and unless they know the classic car world, the answer means nothing to them.
That is the point. The comrade who will run 14,000 km over 37 days with me was born in 1929 — with enough history behind her that calling her a comrade-in-arms starts to feel disrespectful.
As the name Doctor suggests, it was a car used before the war to carry medical equipment in the back.
Why this car?
When I first heard about the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, my reason was as thin as “I want to have a go — it looks fun”. Looking back it is embarrassing; I had no idea a road this difficult lay ahead.
I wrote to the English organisers and got nothing back but refusals. I lost count of how many emails I sent, and in the end I set off for England to argue it face to face. (I will tell that story properly another time.)
Back to the point: why did we choose this pre-war 1929 Buick Doctor’s? When I first decided to enter, I had settled on a much newer Volvo.
That would have cost less and taken less time — but the wish to enter badly enough to change cars turned, in a situation where we were not even being allowed in, into something closer to obsession.
The other large reason:“A model from the period of the very first Peking to Paris rally, which ran in the 2019 event as number 11 and finished.”This car has finished this rally before.
Out of respect for the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge
That may be the final reason.
Through many exchanges I was told a Japanese entry should wait until 2025. Rather than accept a delay, I went to argue in person for a place in this running — and it is no exaggeration to say that choosing this car, as a mark of respect, is what secured it.
An enormous rebuild, aimed at finishing
The goal for this event is to finish. Rather than putting the competition first, I have set the target on the drama that leads to a finish in Paris.
A car that finished the first event is still a 1929 car, and one that covered 14,000 km in the last running, so an enormous amount of maintenance time has gone into it.
Not least the Covid crisis that began in 2020, a global depression in its own right.
The English workshop shut down, and we could not even check the car’s condition — which is where things stand now. But nobody has given up.
When the workshop reopened, a video arrived showing the engine running, and every month word comes of a little more life coming back into her.
The cost has been vast, our funds have run out and the situation could hardly be harder, but I am determined to go and start that engine myself, without giving up.
It is not a reunion but a first meeting, and I dream of the day we can properly get to know each other out there. Let it happen in June 2022.