http://autos.yahoo.com/news/the-firs...on-miles-.html

Pretty impressive, a high school classmate's family had three P1800's when I was growing up. They were pretty robust from what I remember.

 

Stories like these make me smile. I always have more respect for a car that has been driven than a garage queen. I wonder if Volvo will offer some kind of award?



I think these cars look sharp. I wish something like this were around today.

 

1971 model!

 

Definitely a good looking car. I heard it was original engine and tranny IIRC.

 

Awesome! Great looking car too.

 

Any mention if its still the original engine?!

 

Yeah I can't find info on that either, though in one article it said he had the original rebuilt at around 680k. With only a 5-digit odometer he must've had to keep track each time it rolled over. I'd be curious to see his maintenance documentation. I've still got my sights on "only" 500,000 but I'm at 480k now. With every receipt from the car's lifetime to back it up though...

 

The last time I saw an article about this car, it mentioned the engine was rebuilt around 600k and the 1 mil mark. I would imagine it's had at least a few more rebuilds in it's life.

 

Would the odometer show 7 digits or the standard 6 digits? An interview a year ago said he's a retired HS teacher that made a 125 mile daily round trip daily, but working days that's only 27,500 miles a year. He's had to average 65,909 for 44 years to achieve this. Just seems a little out there for a car from Long Island, NY.

 

Amazing.

 

I remember reading an article where he said since he stopped teaching, his yearly mileage was reduced to about 100,000.

 

I gotta keep an eye out for this guy since apparently hes driving it every second of the day. I have seen several old Volvos driving around. Maybe one of em was him.

That article sucks though. I want to know more technical stuff like what maintenance he did and how many engines/trannys he went through.

 

I'm sure a record of his maintenance record will show why it's still running after all these years. Even with regular maintenance, wear and tear will eventually catch up to a car's engine. Even if he did drove 125 miles daily for 365 days a year, that's only 45K miles a year. The other 20K+ miles must be from from the west coast to the east coast numerous times. Even truck drivers don't drive as many miles as he does...thus, without all the details, it's anybody's story. Or the odometer might not even be working correctly?

 

This article from last year says he had the engine rebuilt twice. Also, Volvo gave him a 780 coupe when he hit 1M miles. He put 450k on teh 780, as well. I don't know how the hell he drove that much.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/07...on-mile-volvo/

 

If you stop and think about it, there is really not much that can go wrong with the hardcore parts of an engine and drive train (hardcore meaning in the context, the fundamental components). As long as good maintenance techniques are utilized and the car is not dogged, most can deliver an amazing amount of mileage. Which, when you think about it, is one hell of a testament to metallurgy and engineering.

Some years ago, maybe 15 or twenty, there was a Dulles airport taxi in the Washington DC area that had over 500,000 miles on the clock without a hitch. No rebuilds or teardowns, just maintenance. It was a full sized Chevy with a small block V8 (one of the best engines ever designed). And years ago, MotorWeek had a segment with a 3-series 4-banger BMW that the company had run over one million miles, but that was all on a controlled course. The engine was pulled and torn down with the parts cleaned up and laid out on on tables for the show. No appreciable wear! A synthetic oil had been used throughout the "runs" (Mobil as I recall).

So it can be done. Perhaps the single biggest advantage of modern cars over their carburetor counterparts of 45 years ago is the perfection of electronic fuel injection. Precise metering of fuel means huge reductions in carbon, acid build up, sludge, and other contaminants that were the problems of carbureted engines. Today's engines run so clean that these bygone concerns are just a memory.

 

Beyond proving an excellent point, I gotta' hand it to you, that was extremely well written. Props.

 

Damn, where does he drive so much???

 

Why thank you for the props. I do appreciate your comment.

 

Ain't that the truth. If one were to do the math for someone with a long commute we might see really high mileage. I used to work with a woman who had a 110 mile commute each way to work. She eventually decided to room with someone in an apartment for the work week and go home on weekends. Not a good thing when you have a family. Oh, and then there was a man who had a 250 mile one way commute whom I worked with who did the same thing (he as a high-dollar contractor).

But let's take the woman who commuted 220 miles each day for a five day work week. That's 1,100 miles a week or 53,900 miles a year when you subtract two weeks for vacation and a week for holidays. If she did this for twenty years, she'd rack up 1,078,000 miles. Now I don't know about someone else, but I would have looked for something closer WAY before this (actually I never would have taken the job in the first place).

When I bought my first car, which was brand new, I reached the 1000 mile mark five hours before it was a week old. And I was working two jobs at the time: a letter carrier and in a rock band. I just managed to find the time to drive the thing every opportunity I could get. But I have yet to put over 100,000 miles on one of my own personal cars. My '04 manual TL may be the first to do this for me.

 

thats really sad that the person spent a majority of his life inside of a car.