In 1907, Prince Scipione Borghese won a motor race between Peking and Paris in his new Itala automobile. It took him 60 days . . . during which time he had to dismantle his car to cross mountain ranges, drive along railway tracks and suffer the heat of the infamous Gobi Desert. Seventy-eight years later, China hosted its second motor-sport event, the 555 Hong Kong Beijing Rally. The grueling 2,500-mile (4,023-kilo-metre) rally ran successfully for three years until the events of Tiananmen Square stopped Chinese motor sport in its tracks. In 1992, racing got the green light again when The Paris-Moscow-Beijing Rally recreated in reverse the original 1907 race. This time, the 10,000-mile (16,093-kilometer) blast across 11 countries, two continents, three deserts and innumerable rivers took the best drivers just 27 days. The Hong Kong –Beijing rally was rekindled a year later in 1993