I'm reluctant to use lengthy quotes from another site or publication but sometimes it's justified. To wit:

At any speed over 10 mph, the heavily rutted washboard track through the southern Mongolian desert threatens to tear the body and frame of our car apart. We are already traveling with a broken right rear leaf spring, a cracked radiator and a fractured engine mount that has been chained together to keep the engine from sitting directly on the front cross member. We are down to one-wheel steering, as our bodged-together tie-rod end has failed for the fifth or sixth time. We are just 10 days into the 35-day Peking to Paris rally but at least our 1929 Chrysler Model 75 Roadster is still moving. We pass other competitors stranded in the desert awaiting the arrival of a truck large enough to remove their stricken cars from the 115-degree inferno. Some will wait more than 40 hours for help to arrive.

Those colorful words describe one competitor's experience in the Peking to Paris rally, a modern-day recreation of an event once intended to prove the automobile's worth as a reliable instrument of personal transportation. The quote comes from an article in AutoAficionado magazine describing this fabulous contest in which merely arriving in Paris is the reward. I was attracted because my very first car was a 1929 Chrysler sedan. (Bear in mind that when I learned to drive in the 1950's, cars from the 1930's were still commonly seen... at least in Canada which, uh, went to war in 1939.) This article is both a reminder of driving conditions in an earlier era and what happens when cars from those years are again put to the test.