http://www…ws049.html
Thought that was kind of interesting. When I was in Mexico I could have sworn I saw an old Honda Civic wagon with 750k on the odometer.
That’s entirely possible. Labor is cheap in Mexico, and cars are expensive in terms of income. If the driving environment is not corrosive, and the car design is robust (most Hondas are) and simple, you can expect to get phenominal mileage before it is economically necessary to get rid of the car.
I’m sure in H?vana, Cuba there are lots of 1959 US cars with over 1 million miles on them.
The highest mileage car I rode in was a Toyota Corlla diesel in Asia; it had 1.4 million kilometers on it and aside from the ratty upholstery it ran just fine.
I guess you might mean that the engine had not been rebuilt (maybe). If not, so what? Central America, Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Cuba all have exceptionally high mileage cars because they can’t afford anything else. I’m sure there are many Cuban cars well over 1,000,000 miles. They’ve had lots of TLC, but that’s what got them there.
Just don’t confuse high-mileage cars with ‘untouched’ cars. Odds are good that most any car with over 300,000 miles has had some major work. That beetle with over 1,000,000 miles was probably on it 10th or 15th engine. I just read about a 700,000 mile Corvair, engines last about 100k, trannys about 300k. You can make a car run forever, it just takes $$$.
At the moment, Irv Gordon of Long Island (NY) holds the Guinness Book record high mileage for a car (with some engine rebuilds along the way). He’s well over 2.6 million miles in his 1966 Volvo P1800.
High mileage cars of all types are all over the place; you just seldom hear about them since most people don’t call up the newspaper bragging about it.
A guy in a neighboring state has a 68 Dodge that he bought new, has always kept it garaged and meticulously maintained, and has a verifiable 500k miles on it with an untouched engine/transmission.
My brother in law put 450k miles on an early 80s Chevy pickup (original engine/1 transmission; not bad for hard driving and some commercial masonry use pulling some heavy loads) and this guy did pretty well with a SAAB.
http://www.trollhattansaab.net/archives/2007/01/million_mile_sa.html
The highest one I’ve ever heard of, and I think the one in the Guinness book is a 1976 Mercedes 240D with 2.8 Million miles owned by a Greek taxi cab driver. I believe though, that he rebuilt the engine a few times. I recall reading about a 60’s era Plymouth Fury taxi cab that had the record for a very long time with somewhere well over a million miles without any rebuilds until it was totaled in an accident, but can’t find anything on the internet about it.