To bring everything down to a minimum weight, I cut out from every part of the motor whatever was not strictly necessary to solidity. In this way I realised something that was interesting in those days--a 3-1/2 horse-power motor that weighed 30 kilogrammes (66 lbs.).
I soon had an opportunity to test my tandem motor. The great series of automobile road-races, which seems to have had its climax in Paris-Madrid in 1903, was raising the power of these wonderful engines by leaps and bounds year after year. Paris-Bordeaux in 1895 was won with a 4 horse-power machine at an average speed of 25 kilometres (15-1/2 miles) per hour. In 1896 Paris-Marseilles-and-return was accomplished at the rate of 30 kilometres (18-1/2 miles) per hour. Now, in 1897, it was Paris-Amsterdam. Although not entered for the race it occurred to me to try my tandem motor attached to its original tricycle. I started, and to my contentment found that I could keep well up with the pace. Indeed, I might have won a good place in the finish--my vehicle was the most powerful of the lot in proportion to its weight, and the average speed of the winner was only 40 kilometres (25 miles) per hour--had I not begun to fear that the jarring of my motor in so strenuous an effort might in the long run derange it, and I imagined I had more important work for it to do.
For that matter, my automobiling experience has stood me in good stead with my air-ships. The petroleum motor is still a delicate and capricious thing, and there are sounds in its spitting rumble that are intelligible only to the long-experienced ear. Should the time come in some future flight of mine when the motor of my air-ship threatens danger I am convinced that my ear will hear, and I shall heed, the warning. This almost instinctive faculty I owe only to experience. Having broken up the tricycle for the sake of its motor I purchased at about this time an up-to-date 6 horse-power Panhard, with which I went from Paris to Nice in 54 hours--night and day, without stop--and had I not taken up dirigible ballooning I must have become a road-racing automobile enthusiast, continually exchanging one type for another, continually in search of greater speed, keeping pace with the progress of the industry, as so many others do, to the glory of French mechanics and the new Parisian sporting spirit.