Mille Bornes game
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Mille Bornes (French for a thousand milestones, referring to the stone distance markers on many French roads) is a French card game.
In the United States, Mille Bornes is manufactured and distributed by Winning Moves Games under license from Hasbro. It was previously produced by Parker Brothers and is commonly available in stores that sell games.
Edmond Dujardin
The game was created in 1954 by Frenchman Edmond Dujardin, and was quite similar to the earlier American automotive card game Touring. A key innovation was the addition of the coup-fourré, whereby bonus points are earned by holding back a safety card (such as the puncture-proof tire) until an opponent plays the corresponding hazard card (in this case, the flat tire).
Some Mille Bornes decks are printed in both English and French. The Spanish version Mil Hitos, distributed by Heraclio Fournier, was very popular in Spain during the 1970s. In the Netherlands there is a variant of this game, rijwielspel or Stap Op, which deals with cycling instead of driving. The hazards and distances are different, but the mechanics of the game are exactly the same. The premise of Mille Bornes is that the players are in a Auto racing. Each 'race', or hand, is usually 700 miles or kilometers long (1000 for the standard 4-player game), but the first player to complete that distance exactly has the option to declare an extension in which case the race becomes 1000 miles, hence the name of the game which means 'one thousand milestones'. The object of the game is to reach 5000 points, which normally takes several hands.
Mille Bornes links
Here you can download the rules for Mille Bornes (PDF).