Imagine driving from New York, across the continent, then over to China, across Central Asia and Siberia, then across Europe, all the way to Paris. Now imagine doing it entirely on unpaved roads, railroad ties and trackless wastes… in an open car with no heat, no windshield, no nothing.
That was the idea on Feb. 12, 1908, when six cars lined up in Times Square before a crowd of more than 200,000 to start what was the longest auto race in history—around the world, from New York to Paris. There were three cars from France, one from Germany, one from Italy… and one from Buffalo: the Thomas Flyer. The president of the Thomas Motor Company, Edwin R. Thomas, figured none of the autos would make it as far as San Francisco, and for good reason. There were no roads between cities, and up to that point only nine men had successfully driven across the U.S., none of them in the winter.
Aboard the Flyer at the starting line was its famous driver, Montague Roberts; its mechanic, Buffalonian George Schuster; and a reporter from The New York Times, T. Walter Williams. Sure enough, they shot out into the lead as they drove up Broadway, headed for Albany and, eventually, Buffalo. By the end of the first day, one French car had already broken down and dropped out of the race.
The Flyer had a more than two-hour lead when it reached Buffalo on day four, having used the Erie Canal towpath to fight through a blizzard much of the way. Schuster took advantage of the break to see his wife and children at their South Buffalo home on 23 Manhasset St. Meanwhile, the big, rugged automobile underwent a tuneup at the Thomas factory on 1200 Niagara St. (now part of the Rich Products complex). It was powered by a 60-horsepower 4-cylinder engine and carried a hefty price tag of $4,000 (about $136,000 in 2025 dollars). But unlike the other cars in the New York to Paris race, it was unmodified—a stock car straight off the floor of the Niagara Street factory.
The Thomas crew left town the next day with a second Buffalonian aboard, mechanic George Miller. But while crossing New York State was hard, it was nothing compared with slogging through the rest of the country. The worst snow was in Indiana, the worst mud In Wyoming, where the Flyer crew successfully arranged to drive on the Union Pacific railroad tracks. It took 41 days for the Thomas Flyer to reach San Francisco, well off the summertime record of 14 days, but nevertheless the first wintertime crossing of America by car.
From there the car and crew boarded a steamer for Alaska, where they were expected to cross over the Bering Sea ice to Siberia. Fortunately, it was too late—the ice was melting. So back down to Seattle they sailed, to cross the Pacific by ship. The race resumed in Japan before proceeding to Vladivostok, Russia, with only the Thomas Flyer, the German Protos and the Italian Züst still running. The Buffalo car had an eight-day lead.
By this time, George Schuster was doing all the driving; George Miller was still onboard too, but the rest of the original crew had gotten off back in the U.S. Only one other passenger was aboard, a Times reporter named George MacAdam, who filed dispatches from Siberia via carrier pigeon. Now, the Thomas was in a part of the world where few people had ever seen a car. In Manchuria, Buryatia, Tuva and the rest of Siberia, the crew encountered horsemen, shepherds and remote villages—and mud. The Flyer was even rescued from a mudhole by the Protos, which had caught up to the Buffalo car. After steaming across Lake Baikal, the race continued on the tracks of the still relatively new Trans-Siberian Railway.
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffS8YDFgkTg
Once they got to Europe, conditions improved. The Protos lengthened its lead and entered Paris on July 26. On July 30, the Thomas Flyer entered Paris—and was promptly stopped by a gendarme, who refused to let the car proceed with only one working headlight. A cyclist who happened to be passing by volunteered his bicycle’s light. With the bicycle strapped to the fender, the Thomas Flyer made it to the finish line at 6 p.m., 169 days after it left Times Square. But Schuster and his crew did not bask in the glory of victory until a month later, when the race organizers ruled that the Protos be penalized 30 days for having the car shipped by rail from Idaho to Seattle and skipping Alaska and Japan.
Schuster later estimated that the trusty Thomas Flyer traveled 13,341 miles under its own power, only a small percentage of that distance on actual roads. Through it all, Schuster proved just as rugged as the car he cared for. He was onboard for every mile, fixing the car every night, and driving it from Vladivostok to Paris without a break. In the afterglow of the Flyer’s victory, sales of U.S.-made cars skyrocketed, and the pressure to build decent roads mounted. In 1910, asphalt was invented, and in 1913, the Lincoln Highway was completed. It, too, ran from Times Square to San Francisco—America’s first transcontinental highway.
The Thomas Motor Company went out of business in 1912, but the car it produced, that same, battered Thomas Flyer, is still running today—just as strong, sturdy and capable was it was 117 years ago, when it drove all the way around the world.
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PRODUCTION NOTES: Because we wanted a Buryat speaker to play the horseman who shouts “Shi hémshi? Morinshni haanab?” (“Who are you? Where are your horses?”), we had to use a performer from outside WNY and the Niagara Peninsula for the first time. Fortunately, we found Ayusha Sanzhiev, a musician and computer programmer from Brick, N.J., through the cultural organization serving the Buryat community of New York and New Jersey, and recorded him in Brooklyn.
The Buryat are the easternmost Mongolian people, whose homeland is in Russian Siberia east of Lake Baikal, as well as Mongolia and Chinese Manchuria. The crew of the Thomas Flyer encountered them as they slogged through that portion of the race, and although our scene is fictional, it does reflect the fact that almost none among the Buryat had ever seen a motorcar before. In his memoir, The Longest Auto Race (1968), George Schuster tells of coming to a Buryat village with gates at both ends; denied entry by the village headman, the crew got off the Flyer and physically restrained the headman, forcing the gate open for Schuster to drive through.
Today, the Buryat are a Russian-speaking minority who, like indigenous groups all over the world, are reclaiming their culture, language and autonomy. About 10,000 live in the U.S., many of them arriving within the last decade to avoid serving as cannon fodder in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Many live in Brooklyn’s Russian-speaking Central Asian community in Brighton Beach.
The song that plays throughout the piece is not Buryat, however. It is a song by the Alash Ensemble, a group that plays the traditional music of Tuva. The Tuvans are a central Mongolian people whose homeland lies west of Lake Baikal and whose music has become famous for its propulsive, galloping rhythm and throat-singing vocals. The main music-maker is the igil, a two-stringed cello-like instrument played with a bow and always topped with a horsehead carving. The song here, “Yrlaazhyly” (“Let’s Sing”), tells of how the young men of different tribes gather to sing, how beautiful their music is… and how they figure it’s a sure bet to draw the ladies.
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Cast (in order of appearance):
G. Miller, navigator: Karl-Eric Reif
George Schuster, driver: David Marciniak
Buryat horseman: Ayusha Sanzhiev
Narrator: Susan Banks
Sound recording: Aaron Heverin
Sound editing: Micheal Peters
Music: Excerpt from “Yrlaazhyly,” by Alash Ensemble, live at WFMU on Irene Trudel’s show (Nov. 14, 2011), courtesy Free Music Archive, license type (CC BY-NC-ND)
Produced by the Niagara Frontier Heritage Project
Written by Jeff Z. Klein
Associate producer: Karl-Eric Reif
Special thanks to:
Kathryn Larsen, vice president, content distribution, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
S.J. Velasquez, director of audio strategy, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
Jerry Urban, senior radio broadcast engineer, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
Darina Sanzhieva, cultural director, Buryaad Mongol United Association
Andrew Colwell, program director and staff ethnomusicologist, Center for Traditional Dance and Music, New York City
Darleen Pickering Hummert, Pickering Hummert Casting
Council Member Mitchell P. Nowakowski and the City of Buffalo for their generous support.
Written by Jeff Z. Klein (Niagara Frontier Heritage Project)