by Garrett McKinnon
VehicleMD Staff Writer
Originally published in Winter 2011 Issue

One million miles. It's like driving 10,000 miles a year…for a century. It's like driving around the earth's equator…40 times. It's like taking a round trip to the moon…twice. (Before the astronomers write in, we know it's technically only 955,428 miles in two round trips to the moon, but we rounded!) It's so far, in fact, that it takes light a little more than 5.3 seconds to cross one million miles.

In other words, one million miles is, in the human scale of things, a loooooong way. Yet more and more vehicles these days are turning up with that magic number on their odometers. And I'm not talking about over-the-road trucks, either, since those big-rigs are built to endure such long distances. I'm talking about the very same passenger vehicles most of us drive every single day.

For instance, you might have read about Joe LoCicero, the insurance adjuster from Maine who just hit the million-mile mark in his 1990 Honda Accord. Bought the car used in 1996 when it had 74,000 miles on it and averages about 4,700 miles per month.

Joe LoCicero and his million-mile 1990 Honda Accord.

Or how about Wisconsin travelling salesman Peter Gilbert, who retired his 1989 Saab 900 to a museum in 2006 after wracking up 1,001,285 miles.

Finally, there's New York's Irv Gordon, a retired schoolteacher who purchased his 1966 Volvo P1800S brand new and is preparing to hit the three million-mile (!) mark early next year. Gordon—who put 1,500 miles on the car the first two days he had it—has driven the car an average of 65,000 miles per year, even shipping the car across the Atlantic to tour Europe on occasion.

So how have these drivers achieved such extreme lifespans with their cars, especially when a typical vehicle's lifespan is around 145,000 miles? By following these seven strategies.

1. Drive. A lot.
It goes without saying that in order to hit seven figures on your odometer (if, in fact, your car's odometer goes that high) you have to put in some serious seat time. But not all miles are created equal.

As these drivers could attest, though highway miles are amassed faster, they are typically easier on your car than miles driven in city traffic. Constantly starting, stopping, accelerating, idling, cranking, etc. puts a lot of stress on your car. In contrast, a vehicle, like any machine, operates at peak efficiency when it is in a steady-state rhythm like that experienced while driving at a steady speed on the highway.

But don't worry. Even if you commute (like Gordon did for decades in his Volvo before retiring), there are some other strategies you can use to maximize your vehicle's lifespan.

Peter Gilbert donated his 1989 Saab to a museum once it hit a million miles.

2. Change is good.
All three of these drivers—as well as many others who have racked up very high mileage totals on their vehicles—have something in common: they are all big believers in regular oil changes.

Think about it. Your car's engine is like any other industrial machine. It works hard, with metal parts sliding back and forth against each other hundreds of times each minute. For vehicles that accumulate the miles, that means the engine is experiencing millions, even billions, of revolutions. That kind of mechanical pressure takes its toll on the motor oil that lubricates engine parts, making periodic oil changes a safe bet if you want to keep your car running.

Gordon, for instance, changes his oil every few thousand miles, and didn't have to have the Volvo's engine overhauled for the first time until nearly 675,000 miles showed on the odometer. Plus, as motor oil quality has improved in recent decades, those overhauls have gotten further and further apart!

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