Cars that last a million miles

By Christopher Solomon

Automaker Saab announced recently that it would give a free car to any original U.S. Saab owner who drives the car 1 million miles or more. Spurring the challenge were Wisconsin insurance salesman Peter Gilbert and his 1989 Edwardian Gray Saab 900 SPG, whose odometer not long ago clicked over to six zeros.

His car, now in a museum, still has its original engine and turbocharger.

That's impressive, but he can't touch retired New York schoolteacher Irv Gordon, who's in Guinness World Records for having driven more than 2.5 million miles in his cherry-red 1966 Volvo P1800.

Though stories such as Gilbert's and Gordon's happen once in a blue moon, people who drive their cars for several hundred thousand miles today aren't so unusual. And they're not all devotees of Swedish iron.

Virtually every marque -- Chrysler, Honda, Chevrolet, even Miata -- has a not-so-underground community that's just as proud of the car at 500,000 miles as when it was new, maybe even more. (Mercedes and Volvo hand out grille badges and window stickers.) And their secrets range from the mundane to the downright mystic.

How long should a car last?

"Days past, 100,000 miles was usually the average life of a car," says John Ibbotson, a workshop supervisor who's in charge of vehicles that are tested for Consumer Reports' Auto Test Center in Connecticut, referring to vehicles from the 1950s to 1970s.

"At 100,000 miles, we were into major engine and transmission rebuilding," Ibbotson says. "Cars in the '90s, it was 140,000, 150,000 miles."

The U.S. Department of Transportation reports the average life span of a vehicle is 12 years, or about 128,500 miles. But that could be low simply because people don't maintain them, Ibbotson says. "If you bought a car today, there shouldn't be any problem with that car going 200,000 miles," he says.

Ibbotson's tips:

• Read the book. "The biggest key is doing the maintenance that's in the owner's manual," he says. Simply stick to that schedule. But amazingly, he says, "very few people read the owner's manual."
• Clean me. Don't let road salt build up on a car if you're in a state where you have to worry about that. It'll rust the car's body.
• Money isn't the answer. Not every service will prolong your car's life. "Some dealers offer fuel-injection cleaning (for example). It's not necessary," Ibbotson says.
• Pray for luck. "There is some level of luck" whether you get a car that lasts forever, Ibbotson says. He recalls his father recently sold a 1995 truck with 200,000 miles, and it was in good shape even though he had done almost "absolutely nothing" to it. Meanwhile, a friend has a newer truck of the same model, same body style, with only 65,000 miles, "and that vehicle has had much more maintenance done."

A fascination with Festivas

Suzanne Mitchell and her tiny 1992 Ford Festiva L have had quite the love affair. "We bought it when we left (New York City) and moved to the suburbs," says Mitchell, who lives in Rockland County, N.Y. She started using the Festiva to commute to her job as a TV producer. The years, and the miles, rolled by.

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