encouragement based on conditions of competency and impartiality.
Some months later, MM. de Dion and de Zuylen took the initiative in changing the permanent commission into a subcommittee, adjunct of a society for the encouragement of automobile locomotion; thus the Automobile Club was born, which, in three years and a half, had grown, as to the number of its members, from about fifty to nearly two thousand; and now (January 1902) has over two thousand members. This Club, by reason of its large pecuniary resources, and also of the liberal and scientific spirit which animates the encouragement it gives in every way to the new industry, is certainly to-day one of the most useful and commendable institutions in France.
The Automobile Club of France, for which we have selected the abbreviation 'A. C. F.,' resolved to organise a race from Paris to Marseilles and back for September 24, 1896. This course, 1,061 miles in length, could certainly have been covered in a single trip by machines with relays of men; but the incontestable danger which a night run at full speed involves, led the committee to adopt the principle, which has since been followed, of a test by stages, so regulated that vehicles shall not be obliged to run by night save in cases of long delays due to breakdowns on the road.
It was decided that the start should be made at Versailles, and that the course should be divided into ten stages: Auxerre, Dijon, Lyons, Avignon, Marseilles, Avignon, Lyons, Dijon, Sens, Paris. In each of these towns the vehicles were to be put up in a park under surveillance; the replacing of broken parts was prohibited, but ordinary repairs could be made by whatever means came to hand. Of the thirty-two vehicles ranged about the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile on September 24 at nine o'clock in the morning, which began their run to Versailles on the same day towards noon, twenty-nine returned to Paris. The three which broke down were the only steam vehicles. Another triumph for the petroleum carriage.
This race was again won by a Panhard and Levassor
