2011 OPTIMA Ultimate Street Car Invitational to premiere on SPEED channel Saturday, February 25 at 2 p.m. ET, 5pm west coast

OPTIMA Batteries today announced that the 2011 OPTIMA Ultimate Street Car Invitational, presented by K&N Filters and Wilwood Disc Brakes, will be nationally televised on SPEED, premiering Saturday, February 25 at 2 p.m. ET. This one-hour action-packed broadcast brings viewers an insider look into an event that takes 50 of the hottest street-legal cars from import and domestic manufacturers, and puts them to the test through a series of performance and design events, in order to crown the 2011 OPTIMA Ultimate Street Car.

The 2011 OPTIMA Invitational TV Show is scheduled to re-air on SPEED during the following times:
· Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 3 a.m. ET
· Sunday, March 11, 2012 at 2:30 p.m. ET
· Saturday, March 24, 2012 at 11 a.m. ET

Please visit http://www.optimainvitational.com/ and the OPTIMA Batteries Facebook page for more information on the OPTIMA Invitational, additional air times, participants, official rules and more.

The list of 2011 OPTIMA Ultimate Street Car Invitational sponsors includes: presenting sponsors K&N Filters and Wilwood Disc Brakes, and race event sponsors BFGoodrich, Ridetech, Wilwood Disc Brakes, Raybestos, and Detroit Speed and Engineering. Additionally, The Roadster Shop, MagnaFlow, RECARO, Harman Kardon and Pioneer provided associate sponsorships for the OPTIMA Invitational.

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the 1907 Spyker that competed in the Peking to Paris great race

Found on http://www.cardesign.ru/forum/diskussii/obschenie/1352

 the Italia that won the race is here: http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2010/08/winner-of-1907-paris-to-peking.html

The challenge to drive from Peking, China (modern day Beijing) to Paris, France in 1907, using totally untested automobiles, was taken up by five men:
- Prince Scipione Borghese, accompanied by his mechanic Ettore Guizzardi. They were further accompanied by Italian journalist Luigi Barzini, Sr.
- Charles Goddard, accompanied by journalist Jean du Taillis.
- Auguste Pons and Octave Foucault, his mechanic.
- Georges Cormier.
- Victor Collignon.

On the 30th of August, twenty days later, the Spyker, followed by the two De Dions, arrived in Paris. Charles Goddard wasn’t behind the wheel of the Spyker; due to money-troubles, he wasn’t able to finish the race! But his car won second place and that was probably good enoughfound on http://scheong.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/peking-to-paris-the-original-amazing-race/

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New York to Paris Race of 1908 (The Great Race), the German entry drivers in the top photo

found on http://www.atomicantiques.com/2010/02/03/german-racers To learn more see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1908_New_York_to_Paris_Race

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A MINI is racing in the Dakar (now through South America)

Six BMW X3CCs and the brand new Mini All4 Racing will represent Sven Quandt's team on 13 timed special stages and 5,020km of competitive action in a route of 9,618km over the next 14 days across northern Argentina and Chile.

Quandt has assembled a team of over 80 personnel - the largest line-up in X-raid's eight-year history - to tackle the world's most difficult and infamous off-road rally.

to learn about the Dakar rally http://www.dakar.com/dakar/2011/us/route.html

I learned about the Mini from http://www.ausmotive.com/ but you can shoot straight to the team website http://www.x-raid.de/x-raid-news/News/mini-all4-racing-first-test.htm

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Did you know there was a race to the South Pole in a Biodiesel powered vehicel?

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=929487&page=3

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The winner of the 1907 Paris to Peking endurance race

The 1907 ITALA mod. 35/45 HP won the prize of a magnum of Mumm champagne. The race went without any assistance through country where there were no roads or road-maps. For the race, camels carrying fuel left Peking and set up at stations along the route to give fuel to the racers. The race followed a telegraph route so that the race was well covered in newspapers at the time. Each car had one journalist as a passenger, with the journalists sending stories from the telegraph stations regularly through the race.

The 9,300 mile race was kicked off by a challenge by a newspaper "What needs to be proved today is that as long as a man has a car, he can do anything and go anywhere. Is there anyone who will undertake to travel this summer from Peking to Paris by automobile?"

It was held during a time when cars were fairly new, and went through remote areas of Asia where people were not familiar with motor travel. The route between Peking and Lake Baikal had only previously been attempted on horseback. The race was won by Italian Prince Scipione Borghese of the Borghese family, accompanied by the journalist Luigi Barzini, Sr. He was confident and had even taken a detour from Moscow to St Petersburg for a dinner which was held for the team, and afterwards headed back to Moscow and rejoined the race. The event was not intended to be a race or competition, but quickly became one due to its pioneering nature and the technical superiority of the Italians' car driven by Count Scipione Borghese, winning by three weeks. These sporting successes helped sales dramatically, the company continued to grow. The company experimented with a range of novel engines such as variable stroke, sleeve valve, and "Avalve" rotary types

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peking_to_Paris and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itala

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A movie was made in 1953 about the London to Brighton historic race, Genevieve

from http://tukker.blogspot.com/ which is NSFW (not safe for work) for dissapointingly little info on the movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045808

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I just learned that semi tractors race up Pikes Peak ( I already knew that almost everything else races there)

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Just a thing of beauty, the colors, the history, the factory race cars

Via: http://speedseekers.blogspot.com

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