The tests of Paris-Bordeaux and Paris-Marseilles had shown that automobile carriages can cover long distances on ordinary roads; Marseilles-Nice-Turbie went to show their practical value, by proving that they could get over the heaviest down-grades.
It was also on this last occasion that really considerable velocities were attained for the first time. Between Ollioules and Toulon we made five kilometres (3·1 miles) in less than five minutes; between Cannes and Nice, the speed officially registered for Michelin was about thirty-one miles an hour; ours was a little greater than that, since Michelin had left Cannes on his steam brake five minutes after us, and we were stopped for eight minutes on the outskirts of Nice by an overheated axle, during which time he ran by us like an express train. The second prize was won by a Peugeot petroleum carriage; for, in the first part of the run, Michelin had lost considerable time by the rupturing of his pneumatic tyres, which he had not yet been able to bring to the highest degree of perfection.
In 1899, I wrote:—'This race was the only one ever won by a steam carriage, and it will probably be the last, in view of the incessant progress made to-day in the construction of petroleum motors, making it possible for them, other things being equal, to develop power superior to that of steam apparatus, as far as now known.
'Of course the petroleum motor has not the elasticity of a steam motor, but it has a peculiar steadiness and a wonderful power of endurance. It has but one weak point, its cylinder, and but one delicate structure, its carburetter; while the steam engine has numberless sources of injury in its boiler, its tubings, its pumps, its cylinder-heads, &c., which are simultaneously subjected to extreme pressures, due both to the steam and to violent jolts on rough roads. Besides, to make a one-horse-power hour with a petroleum motor requires about 0·750 kilo of oil, and since the invention of the radiator or surface-condenser, the same water can be used indefinitely
