Editing Tour de France (section)

==Advertising caravan==
[[File:Tour de France Advertising Caravan.jpg|thumb|left|Vehicles from the 2014 Tour de France Publicity Caravan]]
With the switch to the use of national teams in 1930, the costs of accommodating riders fell to the organizers instead of the sponsors and Henri Desgrange raised the money by allowing advertisers to precede the race. The procession of often colourfully decorated trucks and cars became known as the publicity caravan. It formalised an existing situation, companies having started to follow the race. The first to sign to precede the Tour was the chocolate company, [[Menier Chocolate|Menier]], one of those who had followed the race. Its head of publicity, Paul Thévenin, had first put the idea to Desgrange.{{sfn|Cazeneuve|Chany|2011|p=242}} It paid 50,000 francs. Preceding the race was more attractive to advertisers because spectators gathered by the road long before the race or could be attracted from their houses. Advertisers following the race found that many who had watched the race had already gone home. Menier handed out tons of chocolate in that first year of preceding the race, as well as 500,000 policemen's hats printed with the company's name. The success led to the caravan's existence being formalised the following year.

The caravan was at its height between 1930 and the mid-1960s, before television and especially television advertising was established in France. Advertisers competed to attract public attention. Motorcycle acrobats performed for the [[Cinzano]] apéritif company and a toothpaste maker, and an accordionist, [[Yvette Horner]], became one of the most popular sights as she performed on the roof of a [[Citroën Traction Avant]].<ref>Le Petit Bleu de Lot-et-Garonne, France, 20 July 2005</ref> The modern Tour restricts the excesses to which advertisers are allowed to go but at first anything was allowed. The writer Pierre Bost<ref group="n">Pierre Bost was a journalist and playwright known for the prolific film and stage scripts he wrote in the 1940s. He died in 1975.</ref> lamented: "This caravan of 60 gaudy trucks singing across the countryside the virtues of an apéritif, a make of underpants or a dustbin is a shameful spectacle. It bellows, it plays ugly music, it's sad, it's ugly, it smells of vulgarity and money."<ref>"Cette caravane de soixante camions barriolés qui chantent à travers la campagne les vertus d'un apéritif, d'un caleçon ou d'une boîte à ordures fait un honteux spectacle. Cela crie, cela fait de la sale musique, c'est laid, c'est triste, c'est bête, cela sue la vulgarité et l'argent."&nbsp;– Laget, Serge (1990), La Saga du Tour de France, Découvertes Gaillard, France, {{ISBN|978-2-07-053101-1}}. Legend says people in remote areas ran into their houses at the sight of a giant model black lion on the roof of a car promoting Lion Noir shoe polish in 1930.</ref>

[[File:Stage 20 Tour de France 2024 Col de la Couillole 6.jpg|thumb|right|The caravan on Tour de France 2024.]]
Advertisers pay the Société du Tour de France approximately €150,000 to place three vehicles in the caravan.<ref name=autogenerated3>Le Tour Guide, France, 2000</ref> Some have more. On top of that come the more considerable costs of the commercial samples that are thrown to the crowd and the cost of accommodating the drivers and the staff—frequently students—who throw them. The number of items has been estimated at 11&nbsp;million, each person in the procession giving out 3,000 to 5,000 items a day.<ref name=autogenerated3 /> A bank, GAN, gave out 170,000 caps, 80,000 badges, 60,000 plastic bags, and 535,000 copies of its race newspaper in 1994. Together, they weighed {{convert|32|t}}.<ref name=autogenerated7 /> The vehicles also have to be decorated on the morning of each stage and, because they must return to ordinary highway standards, disassembled after each stage. Numbers vary but there are normally around 250 vehicles each year. Their order on the road is established by contract, the leading vehicles belonging to the largest sponsors.

The procession sets off two hours before the start and then regroups to precede the riders by an hour and a half. It spreads {{convert|20|–|25|km}} and takes 40 minutes to pass at between {{convert|20|km/h}} and {{convert|60|km/h}}. Vehicles travel in groups of five. Their position is logged by [[GPS]] and from an aircraft and organised on the road by the caravan director—Jean-Pierre Lachaud<ref group="n">Jean-Pierre Lachaud joined the Tour de France caravan in 1983 to distribute publicity for Crédit Lyonnais, the bank that sponsors the yellow jersey. The experience led to his starting his own company, Newsport, which now administers the caravan for the Société du Tour de France</ref>—an assistant, three motorcyclists, two radio technicians, and a breakdown and medical crew.<ref name=autogenerated3 /> Six motorcyclists from the [[Garde Républicaine]], the élite of the gendarmerie, ride with them.<ref name=autogenerated7>GAN Spécial Tour de France, 1994</ref>