Irv Gordon bought a new Volvo P1800 in 1966 and drove it 3.2 million miles. The car could have gone farther, but Irv died in 2018, so that was it for the mileage streak.
He said he just did regular maintenance on it. Wow.
Irv Gordon bought a new Volvo P1800 in 1966 and drove it 3.2 million miles. The car could have gone farther, but Irv died in 2018, so that was it for the mileage streak.
He said he just did regular maintenance on it. Wow.
8 comments:
Well, Volvo IS known for their reliability... :-)
The 50s and 60s. They knew how to make cars that lasted.
Volvo USA bought the car from his daughters.
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2021/07/08/the-3-26-million-mile-1966-volvo-1800s-has-joined-the-volvo-car-usa-heritage-collection
There's a second aspect of that 3.2 million miles that's almost as mind-boggling as it running that long.
LindaG's remark about it being a '66 car that was running for 52 years and how they knew how to make cars is part of it.
I drive a 2009 Ford Explorer. The engine might conceivably make it to 52 years, but within 10 years I'm probably going to walk out one morning and find a pile of plastic chips where the car used to be. The percentage of plastics in that car is insane. They oxidize or otherwise break down under our sun and crumble away. I have glue holding plastic together visible in several places.
The pieces between the glue lines haven't broken down yet, but I'm sure they will.
My 1994 GMC Suburban K1500 only has a little over 500,000. Covid slowed me down for the past several years.
The Mercedes and Volvos of that time were RENOWNED for their reliability. I wish I could still say so now. Both are built to fall apart in a few years. Old Mercedes and Volvos used to be a common sight. Not anymore...
When I was a kid my neighbor had a mid-60's VW bug with over 200K miles on it. The car still ran fine and didn't burn oil at all. Not bad for an engine that held 2.5 quarts of oil and whose "oil filter" was nothing but a screen!
...This was a a time when if you could get 100K miles out of a car, you were doing something RIGHT!
I remember reading Shibumi by Trevanian shortly after it came out and how the protagonist was driving a car that was legendary for being indestructible and he hated it. Every time he got out and he forget to kick it or bash it, he would pick up a rock and throw it at the car. Soon all the kids in the country were doing the same thing to his car. Of course I can't remember now if it was a volvo. I was still shuddering at the memory of the carpool where one girl would pick us up in her Datson B210.
I'm shopping for a Mercedes Benz diesel from the '70s or '80s. They're bulletproof, parts are available, and the only electronics are in the radio.
The BMWs of the '70s and '80s with the M30 'big six' will go a half million miles before an engine rebuild but every 25,000 miles you'll get a sore back bending over the engine to adjust the valves.
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