BEIJING -- Three sun-burned adventurers in a dusty 78-year-old car led a wheezing convoy of 61 battered vehicles into the Chinese capital Tuesday, completing a 10,000-mile journey that began two months ago in London.
'This was a completely hedonistic adventure. The point was simply to have fun,' said Graham Rankin, 43, who drove the vintage Lancia Simplex with its owner, John Bryden, and another partner, Clive Press.
'The car was beautiful,' Rankin said. 'She held up well indeed, except that we kept blowing tires. We used 24 tires altogether.'
The Lancia was the oldest car to negotiate the London-to-Beijing route, which passed through France, West Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and the Soviet Union before entering China.
Sixty-one vehicles, including two motorcycles, a motorcycle with a sidecar, several Land Rovers and a tiny 1962 English Morris joined the London-Beijing Challenge 1990, which began April 17 and was inspired by a 1907 auto race from the Chinese capital to Paris.
'It hasn't been possible to drive across Russia and China since the last time it was done in 1907,' Rankin said. 'We have a romantic attraction to the race because our car is very similar to the car that won in 1907.'
Michael Hoffmann, 24, said that after China's crackdown in Beijing's Tiananmen Square last year, he hesitated about taking part in a project sanctioned by the hard-line political leadership.
'There was a moral question about whether to do this since the Chinese were really hyping it,' said Hoffmann, who drove the equipment-stuffed Morris with Colin Moles.
'But then again, it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. China's been my dream since I was this big so when the opportunity came, I just did it. We are all travelers, not politicians.'
Several participants said they passed through western China's Xinjiang province without knowing that at least 22 people were killed there in two days of conflict between ethnic Moslems and Chinese troops in the area.
'We heard that something had happened in Urumqi but people didn't want to talk about it,' Hoffmann said. 'We noticed the concern for security as soon as we entered China from the Soviet Union.'
Participants nevertheless were awed by the giant crowds who greeted their passage through China.
'The crowds were enormous,' said Hans Aebi, 45, a Swiss mechanic who drove a powerful 1920 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost with his wife, Jill. 'You didn't ever know if you wouldn't run someone over and kill them.'
