Mille Bornes

[1] It is almost identical to the earlier American automotive card game Touring, designed by William Janson Roche in 1906.

[2] The game's name is derived from the approximate length of the RN 7 (a national route) connecting Paris with the Italian border.

Dujardin moved to Arcachon southwest of Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast of France in 1947, where he and his family began producing the game in the basement of his house at No.

[3] The cards are illustrated and hand-lettered by Joseph Le Callennec [fr], a graphic designer from France.

[3][4] With canasta having fallen out of favor, the regular 1960 edition advertised its connection to bridge: the rulebook included an introduction written by Pierre Albarran, and the game was billed as a favorite of world champions Pierre Jaïs and Roger Trézel.

[4] Parker Brothers, who held the license to distribute Touring in the United States, acquired a license for Mille Bornes in 1962 and began publishing its version in America with updated cover art; the game used the same bilingual cards from the 1960 Dujardin regular edition.

[5]: 2  Parker Brothers updated the box/cover art again in 1971, and introduced a more comprehensive revision in 1982 with significantly simplified artwork for the cards.

[4] In the mid-1970s, the Dujardin company moved its headquarters slightly south to La Teste-de-Buch before being acquired by Regain-Galore [fr] in 1981.

The headquarters in La Teste were moved to Cestas, 10 miles from Bordeaux, in 2009 shortly after the company was acquired by TF1 Games [fr] in 2007.

The Spanish version Mil Hitos, distributed by Heraclio Fournier, was very popular in Spain during the 1970s.

[citation needed] In the Netherlands there is a variant of this game, Stap op, which deals with cycling instead of driving.

For two- or three-player games the goal is shortened to 700, with an option for the first player to complete that distance to declare an extension to 1000 miles.

In either case, once the safety is played, it prevents opponents from using the remedied hazard against that player (or team) for the remainder of the hand.

[5]: 11  [8]: 9, 12 If the player (or team) that was attacked by a hazard is holding the corresponding safety, they may immediately play it (before drawing a card), regardless of whether or not it is their turn, and declare a coup-fourré.

[5]: 21  If the draw pile is exhausted, but the target distance is achieved, this is known as a 'delayed action', which provides a scoring bonus for the hand.

According to the printed rules distributed by Parker Brothers, a game continues until one or both sides reaches a cumulative point total of 5,000.

An oversize kilometer marker ( borne ) alongside RN 7 in Cosne-Cours-sur-Loire ( Nièvre, France )
Typical Mille Bornes Tableau; the player has traveled 725 km, has a Roll and a Speed Limit in effect, and has played the Driving Ace and Extra Tank safeties, the latter as a coup-fourré