Happy days are always short-lived, and after wearing out the two sheets, Miss McBride finally returns to school, and Gao Yi returns to his old rhythm of life.

He now has three things on hand, one is the new factory in Chenjiadunzi, which is still in the infrastructure stage and does not need his excessive concern; One is the renovation of No. 1 on the Bund, all the tenants have been emptied, the wall has been smashed, Dunn is stepping up the renovation, and it is estimated that it will be completed in another week; The other was the official opening of the Automobile Club, which could not be delayed any longer, for for three weeks the dues had hardly ceased to be paid, and by the day Miss McBride returned to school, on September 6, 1903, the two hundred and sixty thousand members had been received at six hundred and twenty-thousand, and there were at least thirty would-be members who had booked members but had not had time to make the payment.

On September 7, before the official opening of the club, the club's affiliated driving school was the first to open, with the first batch of 32 students. The 32 were chosen because there were 32 cars from Europe, and when the cars arrived, the club held an opening ceremony, an important part of which was that the members of the club would drive the newly arrived vehicles through the city along the Bund Boulevard.

The driving school uses four Oldsmobile vehicles that have just arrived from the United States, and although this kind of car is horse-drawn style, there is no steering wheel, only a control lever, and the throttle is also controlled by hand, but at least it makes people familiar with what a motor vehicle is. After you can drive Oldsmobile, you can practice with Gao Yi's Mercedes, and you can basically drive.

Over the next ten days, Gao Yi turned into a driving school instructor, and after crashing an Oldsmobile, he finally taught all the students to be able to drive on the road. Then Gao Yi selected ten people with the best driving sense from these thirty-two students and practiced Mercedes for three days. These ten people are going to drive models with more than 35HP, all of them are performance machines, Gao Yi doesn't want to drive around the city on the day someone mistakenly uses the accelerator as a brake and drives into the crowd.

Finally, on September 21, the French cruise ship "Hounan", which departed from the port of Calais on the 20th of last month, arrived at the Jinliyuan Wharf in the French Concession after a month and one day of sailing, carrying thirteen Mercedes and eight Phoenix from the German company Daimler, as well as a Mercedes-Benz Parsifil, as well as two Panhard and eight Peugeot from France.

However, the cars were not directly brought ashore, but were hoisted onto barges and transported to the Jesson shipyard across the river. Gao Yi and 32 trainees were waiting at the dock at the Yesson shipyard, where they would spend ten days on the dirt road near the shipyard to familiarize themselves with the vehicles.

The Peugeot is petite and cute, the size of a golf cart, one in pure white and the other in white, but the hood is adorned with brass trim and a two-finger-wide red line along the upper edge of the body. All eight cars are two-seaters, with low backrests and adults sitting on them, with the waist up and above the car, making it feel like they are driving a children's car. This seat is supposed to be derived from the two-wheeled carriage, which in the era of horse-drawn carriages was the status of supercars such as Ferrari and Lamborghini, and in order to reduce weight, the body had to be made very slender and compact.

The Panhard looks like a tractor, with the engine front-mounted, but the wheels are still horse-drawn wheels, the body is high, and the engine is high. The Panhard is also a two-seater version, the seat back is also very low, and sitting on it is the same as Peugeot, and the entire upper body is exposed, which is very unsafe in Gao Yi's opinion. Peugeot has some reason to use this kind of seat because of its small body, but Panhard looks stupid and black, and it is strange to use such a seat again. However, the top speed of both cars is only about 30 kilometers per hour, although at first glance it seems that you can flash your waist by increasing the speed, but in fact it is not very powerful.

Daimler's Phoenix is an enlarged version of the Peugeot, and the two shapes, including the style of the hood and the curves of the body, are almost identical. The Phoenix appeared in 1895, and the Peugeot Type 36 was not finalized until 1901, which can also be seen that the automobile industry at this time was always dominated by Daimler in Germany.

The most significant difference between the Phoenix and Peugeot is the Phoenix's wheels, which still use horse-drawn wheels, so the body is relatively high. Overall, the Phoenix looks like a combination of Peugeot and Panhard, with the upper body being Peugeot and the lower half being Panhard.

In addition, five of the eight Phoenix are four-seaters, with very wide sofa-shaped seats in the front with high backrests that support all the way above the thoracic spine. The backrests of the rear seats are higher than those of the front seats, but the two rows are too close to each other, resulting in very narrow legroom in the rear, just like the 2-plus-2 sports cars of later generations. The other three two-seaters, with a very short wheelbase, rear wheels just below the trailing edge of the front seats, and Mercedes-sized rubber inflatable wheels, appear to be improved racing versions.

The body of the Mercedes-Benz Parsifil is still in the shape of a horse-drawn carriage, and it is in the style of a public carriage, with completely straight lines without a trace of arcs. However, the wheels used have been modified to rubber inflatable wheels, so the body looks quite low. The engine is also front-mounted like the Mercedes, and is also fixed directly to the front axle, rather than on a higher subframe like the Phoenix, Peugeot or Panhard. It can be seen that Parsifil imitates Mercedes' design, not only in terms of appearance, but also in terms of structure. The only improvement in Parsifil was the way the rear wheels were driven, with power coming from the engine and then directly through the drive shaft to the rear wheels, rather than through the intermediate shaft to the sprockets, which were then driven by a chain of rollers attached to the sprockets.

The remaining thirteen cars are all Mercedes, and the various models and displacements all look similar, and it is difficult to distinguish them from the appearance. The only difference is the seats in the racing version. Instead of sofa-shaped seats, the car uses two separate bucket seats, one large and one small, with the smaller one for the navigator.

After 10 days of intensive training, at 8 a.m. on October 1, all the members of the club gathered at the Jardine Pier in Hongkou. At half past eight, the barge came from the Yesong shipyard on the other side of the river, and the unloading was completed at half past nine, and by nine fifty o'clock, all the members were already in the car.

As of September 30, the club had a total of 97 members, including Gao Yi, of whom 73 had paid. Among the 97 people, 93 people were divided into 32 new cars, of which the rear compartment of the Mercedes-Benz was relatively spacious, and three people were squeezed. The remaining four people sat on Gao Yi's 35HP.

At ten o'clock, all the cars honked their air horns, "Uh-woo-", "uh-uh-", and the sound filled the entire Hongkou.

Gao Yi drove a 60-horsepower Mercedes Simplex at the head, and a convoy of 33 blue, white, and black cars marched along Broadway Road at a speed of 20 yards.

At the intersections along the way, there are Indian Asan in traffic control, and the lively crowd is also in charge of guidance, and the convoy almost unobstructed to the front of the Waibaidu Bridge. After crossing the bridge, Gao Yi increased his speed to 20 miles, and it was a kilometer and a half from Waibaidu Bridge to Bund No. 1, but it took only three minutes to arrive.

The small square at the entrance of the club was already crowded with crowds, most of whom were members of the Shanghai Federation next door, and they applauded when they got out of the car, their eyes full of eagerness and envy.

In the middle of the small plaza stands a two-story sign with six lines of large characters such as Service, Survey, Studio, School, Sparepart, and Sale. There is also a huge shield at the top of the brand, the main color of the shield is the blue sky and white clouds, the upper left corner is a golden bull that swoops down, the lower right corner is a black prancing horse standing up, the upper right corner is painted with two overlapping "R" characters in front of the front and one back, and the lower left corner is a flying "B", and there is a small shield in the middle of the shield, but in the middle of the small shield is a red trident.