> Over the years, nearly everything on the vehicle has been replaced or repaired, and Campbell says the only original part is likely the body, and even that has had work done on it.
It’s the Tercel of Theseus: if every part has been replaced, is it still the same car?
Fun fact: The average replacement rate of cells in our bodies (generally speaking) is around 7 to 10 years. So all of our parts have been replaced several times over...
The answer isn't as sexy as the question. Ontological questions, and therefore mereological questions, are a matter of convention based on how closely-associated relations—like how the "parts" of the "car" function—cohere over space and time.
Yeah, thats the first thought came to my mind as well. It does give me a great deal of satisfaction when a tool, gadget or anything last long with daily use and limited maintenance.
When I lived in Germany, in the 90s, I regularly sat in diesel Mercedes Benz taxis with over a million kms under the hood. Private drivers usually. Many had giant mileages.
We used to say (tongue in cheek) that after 250k, the MB diesel engine was broken in. I don't think MB makes them like they used to anymore.
> I don't think MB makes them like they used to anymore.
You guessed correctly. The 1980's W124 was one of those cars that would keep going and going. Mechanically great, with a galvanized chassis and bodywork that made it also pretty rust resistant.
The 1993 version of the W124, supposed to be an "improved" remodeled version of the original car, was a worst car in every aspect. It rusted, the plastics were cheaper, etc.
The follow-up, the W210, is the model that cost MB dearly. Through cost-cutting and greed, they lost a huge chunk of the taxi market. The car itself was also an absolute rust-bucket piece of cr*p, the interior was also worst, with the whole woes compounded by crappy electronics.
MB as a brand hasn't really recovered from that. The engineering excellency, attention to detail, and engineering pride that made those W123/W124 almost unkillable is lost, and won't be found again.
I had a 1984 W123 300TD Turbodiesel I bought with 356k miles on the odometer (which was broken, total mileage unknown). I drove it for over 100k more miles before I sold it. It had no blowby and no perceptible oil consumption between changes. The OM617 with MW pump was a fantastic engine. The Garrett turbo had something to be desired though so I replaced it with a much more efficient Holset HX-30 which worked great with the pump maxed out. I estimated from 0-60 times it was putting out around 150HP, up from 120HP stock. The 722.3 transmission didn't give me too much trouble either but I did rebuild the valve body with a shift kit to make it shift better. The one major issue I ran into was the rear hydraulic self leveling suspension. The hydraulic struts were NLA so I pored over a bunch of parts manuals and eventually found a Lesjofors spring that was the right height and spring rate--I believe from a later model S600--which worked perfectly with Bilstein HDs from a W123 sedan. Should never have sold that car.
I currently own a W210 E300 Turbodiesel. I bought it with 49.5k miles, it currently has 120k. Overall it's been a decent car, the OM606/722.6 drivetrain is great. The rest of it is pretty miserable though. I would like someday to swap this drivetrain into a W124 wagon, with a standalone transmission controller and the injection pump from an OM603 to make the engine fully mechanical.
In the meantime, I'm working on rebuilding a 2.65 rear diff from an SL class car to swap in. I have a TCU from another car that had this final drive ratio so hopefully it'll work. The stock 3.07 ratio is no good for US highways. In 5th gear at 2250rpm (bsfc minimum) the speed is about 100kph (62mph). With the 2.65 rear it'll be more like 77mph which is where I usually set my cruise control. Should get a lot better fuel economy and less noise.
Those MB diesels made it to the States too, and they were equally well respected here in my experience. Although, there's long been a diesel aversion among some part of the population here, so it was maybe a narrower subset of the population familiar with the legend of the MB diesels.
I drove one for years, acquired when they were available as a quite cheap ~15 year old car. I've since switched to a Toyota and been quite happy with that. I don't know how long the current Toyotas will last, but the golden era Toyotas I think probably last about as well as the legendary MB diesels (with the bonus of not having to track down vacuum leaks).
I recall a Greek 240D that had exceeded 4M kM (i.e. 4 GM). Regular motor and transmission rebuilds at intervals that would shame a contemporary dealer's service department.
No diesel engine is made well these days in my opinion, at least as far as passenger vehicles go.
Emissions systems on diesel engines have made the reliability pretty abysmal. That's not to say improving emissions isn't a good goal, but it was implemented terribly.
Between regulators over prescribing solutions and car companies finding the quickest and cheapest "fix" every step of the way, we ended with horribly complex motors that break down much earlier than before. It'd be interesting to see a comparison of total emissions when a 90s diesel is still on the road today compared to a newer diesel that is effectively junk in 10 years or a couple hundred thousand miles.
I remember one day I took my car to the mechanic and saw they were doing a head job on a Toyota Sienna (the minivan) that was used as a Taxi. Took a peek inside and realized the car had something like 450k miles.
Now a proud 4Runner owner, I see on forums all the time guys bragging about hitting 300k, 400k and as high as 600k in their 4Runners.
> Over the years, nearly everything on the vehicle has been replaced or repaired, and Campbell says the only original part is likely the body, and even that has had work done on it.
To me this makes it less interesting. I would be amazed if the original parts (outside of what gets replaced for maintenance) lasted that long. But it’s hard to judge how durable the car is when everything has been replaced
This kind of mileage is unusual with cars but it's pretty normal for semis. But even with those, engines get overhauled and there's lots of cumulative maintenance over the years. There are still trucks build in the sixties in service in some places.
With EVs, we might get some battery packs and drive trains actually lasting this long. Maybe not with nmc batteries. But some lfp batteries seem to have enough charge cycles on paper that they really could last that long. 5000 charge cycles at 300 miles per charge adds up to about 1.5M miles. Of course lots of other things might fail. But at least electrical motors are known to be pretty durable. That's not a common failure point on EVs as far as I know. But there's plenty of other stuff in EVs (electronics, cooling systems, suspension, etc.) that can break.
Of course, it will be a while before we'll see EVs that have driven that far as those type of batteries have only been on the market for a few years and even with 100K miles driven per year (which is a lot), it would take 12 years to get to 1.2M. This Toyota took quite a few decades to get there.
According to the article, this car actually wasn't particularly durable (the words 'rust buckets' were used). But if you just keep patching it up, of course it will run fine. And greasing up all the bits that would normally rust seems smart as well.
I get that, but I think the impressive part here isn't that the original parts are still there: it's that the car has been kept on the road for 40 years and 1.2M km through sheer persistence and maintenance
Tbf they said “nearly” everything. Probably it’s the same engine block, transmission housing, etc. And of course the shell, which is the most important. And I bet loads of interior too so where you sit feels very familiar.
A friend bought a 14-yr-old one of these for little at an auction in 1999. As someone who knew little about cars, her logic was, it "looked OK' and had had one owner, and crucially, the radio was tuned to a NPR classical music station and therefore anyone who listened to that would have treated their car responsibly. ;) Suffice to say, this was an excellent purchase, reliable and inexpensive to run, in fact in order to find out whether some maintenance was due or not she managed to track down the previous owner who turned out to be a middle-aged woman who was just as responsible as my friend imagined. ;)
This reminds me of going hill hopping as a kid with my radio tuned to the local NPR classical music station. Once when I went a little airborne, my engine shutoff upon landing. (It restarted OK though.)
> Over the years, nearly everything on the vehicle has been replaced or repaired, and Campbell says the only original part is likely the body, and even that has had work done on it.
aka
This is my grandfather’s axe.
My father replaced the handle.
I replaced the head.
These old economy boxes were designed to be as simple as possible. We simply don't have anything like it today. While the durability of year 2000+ vehicles has very consistently improved, their repairability is trending exactly opposite. A "lifetime" part failure can be 5x the time and effort to remove and replace compared to the pre-2000 models.
There are some calculations that makes replacing a old gas or diesel powered car more environmentally friendly, as compered to buying a new electric car. I do wonder where the tipping point is though, and if there isn't an environmental argument to be made that not only should government bad the sale of new internal combustion engine cars, but they should also ban cars with an expected lifespan shorter than e.g. 15 - 20 years.
If externalities were correctly priced in to fuel, rare earths, rubber, road wear etc then it would be easy to see, the cheaper the better.
But they aren’t, not even close. Oil is massively subisidised by the military before the environmental costs. Brake particulates and tyres don’t cover the cost of microplastics and lung damage, heavy cars don’t pay anywhere near the damage they cause to the roads and bridges etc.
Due to this you can argue pretty much whatever you want by ignoring certain costs depending what you want to come out with.
My petrol car is 20 years old, it’s done 70,000 miles, it weighs about 1,000kg and burns through 300 litres of unleaded each year to do the 3,000 miles I do in it.
I suspect scrapping and replacing this with even a small electric car would not be globally environmentally worthwhile. There may be improvements to local air quality assuming regenerative breaking etc, that may be offset by increased tyre and road wear though, even ignoring the impact of the co2 to generate the 80kWh a year it would require.
I'm pretty sure that holding onto my '98 Civic is more environmentally friendly than buying a new EV - especially since I only drive ~3000 miles/year (If I drove 10K+ miles/year then the calculation would likely skew towards an EV). The Civic still runs great and it's easy to repair when something does go wrong. And the mileage is quite good - ~30MPG combined (easily get 37MPG on the freeway).
That 1985 Toyota emits more GHG and NOx per mile than a new vehicle because it wasn't built to meet the latest US or Canadian emissions standards. Older vehicles emit more pollutants so in some US states the government will buy the car to have it scrapped, thus improving the overall fleet emissions statewide. In California there are owners who keep and maintain pre-1975 vehicles because they have little or no smog control systems, are easy to work on, and they are exempt from mandatory bi-annual smog testing.
Nobody who isn't fairly ignorant would've been surprised if it was a 4cyl 5spd Ford Ranger, an old Volvo 240, an 2000s diesel dodge or GM, a crown vic cop car, a Honda Accord, a Ford E-series or Chevy Savannah etc, etc. Somewhere there's probably a rusted out '99ish Grand Caravan that's close to a mil and on it's 6th transmission.
Pretty much every vehicle that isn't equipped with some achilles heel or highly engineered to a price point can go a mil if you take reasonably good care of it and don't mind throwing 0-1 engines and 2-4 transmissions in.
tbh I was guessing Volvo 240-series. I suspect cockroaches will be driving those battleships around after the bomb/climate collapse/asteroid/big crunch.
There are also a few Porsche 911 Turbos with that level of mileage. A guy on Rennlist posts occasional updates about his one which he even tracks quite regularly: https://rennlist.com/forums/996-turbo-forum/662617-high-mile...
(Engine was restored once, out of precaution after it blew a turbo at 610K km, but when they opened it up it had very little wear & tear, only a small air leak.)
The secret to longevity really is more frequent oil changes than the manufacturer suggests, and doing most of the mileage with the engine fully warmed up.
> Since then, he's used it as his daily driver, putting on at least 120 kilometres a day driving from his home in Wyses Corner, N.S., to Halifax and back each day of his working life.
120km per day of commuting is crazy to me. I work from home and occasionally do a 14km bicycle commute to the office.
> Over the years, nearly everything on the vehicle has been replaced or repaired, and Campbell says the only original part is likely the body, and even that has had work done on it.
A modern "ship of theseus" paradox.
It’s more impressive that this man has the fortitude and dedication to keep spare parts, constantly maintain it, and even have back up vehicles for all these years.
If the article mentioned the car had its original engine this entire time. I would have seen it as an anomaly and possibly a good testament to Toyota engineering and need to keep up with maintenance.
Although the current owner's plan to do a cannonball run in it is something I find off-putting. His previous stupid idea was to put a turbocharger and see how long it will last, fortunately his fans dissuaded him from doing it.
They're both Toyota's, but the Lexus cost an order of magnitude more so by that measure it is not nearly as impressive. This is a low end car we're talking about.
I had a Volkswagen that reached 1M km, mostly on original parts, with no major component replaced. It was stolen and, most likely, scrapped for parts. Her organs live on in other cars.
I was curious what make and model achieved this, knowing that it couldn't be a Honda Ridgeline since their transmissions tend to explode without warning. Mine (a 2019) just disintegrated at 35,000 miles despite my changing out its fluids only two months back.
Maybe my next car will be a Toyota. My 1994 Pickup (like the one the guys on Top Gear couldn't kill) was pretty durable, though the frame did rust to bits at only 60,000 miles.
A relative of mine drives a VW Polo with 3 cylinders and below 1000 ccm. It always sounded a bit off, like a tractor, but the car now has around 450.000 km on the clock and is still going strong, looking great, and is low-maintenance and fuel-efficient.
The secret: she lives in a rural area and cruises most of the time with constant 80-90 km/h.
A similar car used in a city with many start/stop cycles would probably not last as long.
Back in the 90's my dad and I put a more than 500k on a Volvo 740 and mostly running original parts (oil filters, brakes etc were changed throughout the decade 84/96 - Québec winters included).
The car ran fine and was ultimately sold to a taxi driver that apparently brought it to close to a million (no proof though).
I think now days people treat cars like phones. Minimal continual maintenance can work wonders and save you a bundle in the process.
I grew up in a Tercel family, and we too had a “parts car” in the back yard. Reliable, safe, repairable car the likes of which simply don’t exist anymore.
Some European Diesels have reached that amount with the same engine block and head ;-)
My dad's BWM E60 has a M47 2.0L Turbo Diesel, and with around 440,000km keeps going strong.
He probably will change it when it reach the half million due to being an old car, but the sad part here is how we won't probably be able to buy any brand new car that could reach that amount of miles without spending a lot of money on the way on repairs.
> I wonder how many of the cars manufactured today are still here after million kilometers
The overwhelming majority of 1980s Toyota Tercels do not make it to a million kilometers. This one didn’t, either. It has had every part replaced, many multiple times over.
The owner has 3 donor parts cars and there’s a photo of his piles of parts like alternators. The original car didn’t last a million kilometers. He’s just been replacing parts constantly.
> My guess is none as they are impossible to fix yourself.
No they’re not. I have a lot of car friends and we all do most of our own work. One of them has now opened a shop and services BMWs including engine rebuilds of modern engines.
This is a myth. Service manuals are available. Even the digital repair tools are widely pirated, but you can generally buy a short term license to use them yourself if you want.
I look after a second-hand truck dealer's website and there are often prime movers with 1m+ kilometers and less than 5 years old.
Fun fact: Heavy machinery sales advertise the exact hours they have been used and not the odometer, so a large dump truck might only be 3 years old but have ~7,000 hours usage.
SAABs used to actually hit a million miles (not 745,000 mi, but metric sure does sound more impressive) with litle effort. If I recall there used to be a million, and half-million mile club
My dad once got a used saab 99 (a nice tomato soup color) and we rolled the odometer while we owned it. Great car with proper maintenance, which used to be sooo easy and accessible.
my saabs, none a million, though none have working odometers anymore. but all have over 300,000 miles and run in various states of good to bad. with a little effort, they keep ticking.
We have a 2000 4Runner with approximately 325,000 miles (523036 km), and nothing has been replaced. Currently, it isn't a daily driver but a spare for anyone to use. Tires, Brakes, fan belt, and oil changes, that's all. There was an old Avalon that had over 425k miles on it, but during a storm, a tree fell on it and it was written off.
I didn't know Nissans were known for being unreliable; my first car was a hand-me-down Sentra that ran smoothly till I sold it at ~220k. I've owned three cars since, I think the worst was a used Elantra that I just put out to pasture at 198k. Persistent electronic issues and terribly uncomfortable on the passenger side. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was an asking price of 10k to repair a faulty airbag sensor. Hoping the RAV4 that replaced it will live up to its reputation.
Kind of a nothing story if everything has been replaced. My car could make it to 1.2M km too if I replaced the engine every time it gave out. Seems like a huge time and money sink for no good reason. Not to judge the man for having a hobby of course, let him have fun, but the news article is misleading.
Toyota gave the guy a new truck so they could study the one he had.
As a Toyota fan boy myself (still driving a 2000 4Runner into the ground), those 2000s builds were such a great era of engineering. That being said, I think they’ve lost a step over the last decade (don’t get my started on the new v4/v6 turbo blocks they’re building…).
I suspect that it would have been less expensive to ditch it 600,000 km ago and just get a new one. And possibly about the same in terms of environmental cost.
Getting those parts used would be less expensive, and a win for the environment, but the labor cost is very high.
My brorher got 350,000 miles in a cheap Hyundai doing the oil changes himself. He only replaced the water pump before he traded it in for a Kia. He is nearly at 250,000 on the Kia with no repairs needed so far.
> Over the years, nearly everything on the vehicle has been replaced or repaired, and Campbell says the only original part is likely the body, and even that has had work done on it.
Honestly, 1.2M km in Atlantic Canada is even more impressive given the winters and salt... most cars here rust into oblivion long before the engine quits
Pick a flagship "would be bad for our reputation if we f it up) product from and spec it out so that it gets well proven and ironed out major assemblies.
The article and comments show that as usual, the general public doesn't use metric prefixes effectively.
While it is technically correct to say "1.2 million km" or "1,200,000 km", it is needlessly verbose. It is written more succinctly as "1.2 Gm (gigametres)". However, it is incorrect to stack prefixes like "1.2 Mkm".
After I point this out, the usual complaints will surface: "But no one knows what a gigametre is! We're all used to talking about odometers in only kilometres. No one uses big prefixes." Oh really? Are you telling me you don't know the difference between a kilobyte and a gigabyte? Should we revert to calling a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi frequency as "2.4 million kHz", because kilohertz is familiar to people working with audio frequencies and AM radio?
Overall, I think we should use the right prefixes for the right job. If you're talking about city blocks, use metres. If you're talking about a single trip, use kilometres. If you're talking about annual driving distance, use megametres. If you're bragging about how long your car has survived, use gigametres (or at least thousands of megametres).
Distance to Sun is roughly 150 Gm. More useful in this case is probably distance to the Moon, which is 0.38 Gm. So the car has traveled this distance more than three times.
I hate to be a purist about this sort of thing but once you start replacing engines/transmissions, having a million mile car starts losing its novelty. This isn't some exceptionally reliable vehicle, it's just a guy who has more time and money then sense
The Toyota fanboys in these comments are a really great illustration of how human factors, cliche's and circle jerks degrade discussion
Nobody who doesn't have some bias derived ignorance would've been surprised if it was a 4cyl 5spd Ford Ranger in fleet service, an old Volvo 240 or Honda Accord in commuting service, an 2000s diesel Dodge or GM in work truck service, etc, etc. There are a lot of "good" vehicles out there that can get close to half a mil with fairly cheap work, from there it's just a matter of having an owner who cares to make the investment, something much more likely to happen to a "cool niche car" for which there aren't a ton of like-priced replacements available like a Tercel Wagon than a more boring vehicle.
> “Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
I expect the owner has learned some interesting things in his ongoing mission to continue life with the car he loves.
--
I have not seen it stated explicitly anywhere, although it is often a subtext of some discussions about the value of "diversity". Usually positive diversity is talked about either in terms of inclusivity, or of the usefulness of different backgrounds converging to tackle common problems.
But I thinks idiosynchratacity ("idio-synchra-tacity") is incredibly important, as a measure of the health and value of a civilization.
As apposed to diversity of minds triangulating on common solutions to shared problems, idiosynchratacity is the usefulness of having diverse minds seeking to solve novel subjectively motivated problems. With an emphasis on self-generated "problems" or missions, that may appear to no objective value to others.
As information and problem solving tools disperse, there is great value in people who find hard problems interesting, whatever the lack of apparent or immediate merit. Who follow through and solve those problems. Something is always learned. New conditions may be created that in turn create new idiosyncratic problems to solve, or shed unexpected light on solutions to more commonly recognized and valued problems.
--
Respect for idiosynchraticity is also a strong measure of reciprocal respect in a society.
Can we respect those we don't understand? The strange, the odd, the weird? Niche artists, serious practitioners of uncommon fetishes, collectors with obscure criteria, mountain climbers, or those that need to "resolve" well solved problems, but in some arbitrarily challenging way. All just for the joy of it?
Widespread idiosynchraticity maximizes civilizations deployment of unbounded curiosity, and the search for new ideas, in the most non-obvious directions.
--
Idiosynchraticity also makes the world much more culturally interesting for all of us.
It maximizes the contribution of each individual, when they do something different or orthogonal to mainstream interests, instead of retreading common paths.
More individuals, greater populations, have much greater value if the increase in individuals increases idiosynchraticity, as apposed to amplifying conformity.
--
There are obvious things we want from super intelligence as it comes into being. Alignment with our needs, which I prefer to recast as alignment with general ethics (they will need the positive sums of ethics between themselves too), is a big one.
But maximal idiosynchraticity should also be valued. The worst case of course, being an endlessly improving and effective AI, completely focused in turning the universe's resources into paper clips.
A much more realistic, just as tragic fate, would be AI's competitively bent on turning all the universes resources into an expansion of themselves, with no other goal. Each competing to eat the universe, for the only purpose of being the winner, the survivor, at the end of the universe eating context.
--
The world/universe will be a much less rich place, if the exploration of reality along seemingly non-practical dimensions dies with us.
I have hopes that curiosity as a practical investment heuristic will maintain the life of idiosyncratic pursuits.
If those pursuits do continue and expand, then super intelligence will truly be an upgrade to our species. Not just a more capable civilization, but more rich as a producer of novel ideas and artifacts.
jbeard4|6 months ago
It’s the Tercel of Theseus: if every part has been replaced, is it still the same car?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
rendaw|6 months ago
jschveibinz|6 months ago
comprev|6 months ago
[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=56yN2zHtofM
xattt|6 months ago
vehemenz|6 months ago
v5v3|6 months ago
https://youtu.be/56yN2zHtofM
j45|6 months ago
tedk-42|6 months ago
geodel|6 months ago
stefanka|6 months ago
unknown|6 months ago
[deleted]
hermitcrab|6 months ago
physix|6 months ago
We used to say (tongue in cheek) that after 250k, the MB diesel engine was broken in. I don't think MB makes them like they used to anymore.
fransje26|6 months ago
> I don't think MB makes them like they used to anymore.
You guessed correctly. The 1980's W124 was one of those cars that would keep going and going. Mechanically great, with a galvanized chassis and bodywork that made it also pretty rust resistant.
The 1993 version of the W124, supposed to be an "improved" remodeled version of the original car, was a worst car in every aspect. It rusted, the plastics were cheaper, etc.
The follow-up, the W210, is the model that cost MB dearly. Through cost-cutting and greed, they lost a huge chunk of the taxi market. The car itself was also an absolute rust-bucket piece of cr*p, the interior was also worst, with the whole woes compounded by crappy electronics.
MB as a brand hasn't really recovered from that. The engineering excellency, attention to detail, and engineering pride that made those W123/W124 almost unkillable is lost, and won't be found again.
jcgrillo|6 months ago
I currently own a W210 E300 Turbodiesel. I bought it with 49.5k miles, it currently has 120k. Overall it's been a decent car, the OM606/722.6 drivetrain is great. The rest of it is pretty miserable though. I would like someday to swap this drivetrain into a W124 wagon, with a standalone transmission controller and the injection pump from an OM603 to make the engine fully mechanical.
In the meantime, I'm working on rebuilding a 2.65 rear diff from an SL class car to swap in. I have a TCU from another car that had this final drive ratio so hopefully it'll work. The stock 3.07 ratio is no good for US highways. In 5th gear at 2250rpm (bsfc minimum) the speed is about 100kph (62mph). With the 2.65 rear it'll be more like 77mph which is where I usually set my cruise control. Should get a lot better fuel economy and less noise.
protimewaster|6 months ago
I drove one for years, acquired when they were available as a quite cheap ~15 year old car. I've since switched to a Toyota and been quite happy with that. I don't know how long the current Toyotas will last, but the golden era Toyotas I think probably last about as well as the legendary MB diesels (with the bonus of not having to track down vacuum leaks).
i_am_proteus|6 months ago
Arubis|6 months ago
_heimdall|6 months ago
Emissions systems on diesel engines have made the reliability pretty abysmal. That's not to say improving emissions isn't a good goal, but it was implemented terribly.
Between regulators over prescribing solutions and car companies finding the quickest and cheapest "fix" every step of the way, we ended with horribly complex motors that break down much earlier than before. It'd be interesting to see a comparison of total emissions when a 90s diesel is still on the road today compared to a newer diesel that is effectively junk in 10 years or a couple hundred thousand miles.
moltar|6 months ago
Someone I knew had it and they drove it 24/7 in 3 shifts and it had over a million kilometers on it. Visually looked fine and ran fine.
_fat_santa|6 months ago
Now a proud 4Runner owner, I see on forums all the time guys bragging about hitting 300k, 400k and as high as 600k in their 4Runners.
TimByte|6 months ago
insane_dreamer|6 months ago
jmrm|6 months ago
SilverElfin|6 months ago
To me this makes it less interesting. I would be amazed if the original parts (outside of what gets replaced for maintenance) lasted that long. But it’s hard to judge how durable the car is when everything has been replaced
jillesvangurp|6 months ago
With EVs, we might get some battery packs and drive trains actually lasting this long. Maybe not with nmc batteries. But some lfp batteries seem to have enough charge cycles on paper that they really could last that long. 5000 charge cycles at 300 miles per charge adds up to about 1.5M miles. Of course lots of other things might fail. But at least electrical motors are known to be pretty durable. That's not a common failure point on EVs as far as I know. But there's plenty of other stuff in EVs (electronics, cooling systems, suspension, etc.) that can break.
Of course, it will be a while before we'll see EVs that have driven that far as those type of batteries have only been on the market for a few years and even with 100K miles driven per year (which is a lot), it would take 12 years to get to 1.2M. This Toyota took quite a few decades to get there.
According to the article, this car actually wasn't particularly durable (the words 'rust buckets' were used). But if you just keep patching it up, of course it will run fine. And greasing up all the bits that would normally rust seems smart as well.
userbinator|6 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irv_Gordon had a Volvo with over 3.25 million miles (5.2Tm), although it's also had 3 engine rebuilds.
matt_s|6 months ago
The fact that the owner can keep it going is a testament to the maintainability of combustion engines that don't have high tech computers in them.
moffkalast|6 months ago
TimByte|6 months ago
jama211|6 months ago
energy123|6 months ago
burnt-resistor|6 months ago
epolanski|6 months ago
Because if you get chain timing issues on a 2010 BMW diesel, you ain't repairing that, it's more expensive than a new car.
Glawen|6 months ago
nickd2001|6 months ago
unclenoriega|6 months ago
trenchpilgrim|6 months ago
franze|6 months ago
aka
This is my grandfather’s axe. My father replaced the handle. I replaced the head.
jasoncartwright|6 months ago
HPsquared|6 months ago
amelius|6 months ago
1970-01-01|6 months ago
mrweasel|6 months ago
hdgvhicv|6 months ago
But they aren’t, not even close. Oil is massively subisidised by the military before the environmental costs. Brake particulates and tyres don’t cover the cost of microplastics and lung damage, heavy cars don’t pay anywhere near the damage they cause to the roads and bridges etc.
Due to this you can argue pretty much whatever you want by ignoring certain costs depending what you want to come out with.
My petrol car is 20 years old, it’s done 70,000 miles, it weighs about 1,000kg and burns through 300 litres of unleaded each year to do the 3,000 miles I do in it.
I suspect scrapping and replacing this with even a small electric car would not be globally environmentally worthwhile. There may be improvements to local air quality assuming regenerative breaking etc, that may be offset by increased tyre and road wear though, even ignoring the impact of the co2 to generate the 80kWh a year it would require.
realusername|6 months ago
UncleOxidant|6 months ago
while_true_|6 months ago
cpursley|6 months ago
potato3732842|6 months ago
Pretty much every vehicle that isn't equipped with some achilles heel or highly engineered to a price point can go a mil if you take reasonably good care of it and don't mind throwing 0-1 engines and 2-4 transmissions in.
volkadav|6 months ago
martini333|6 months ago
Thanks. As a frequent visitor to the moon, I know exactly what that's like.
thePhytochemist|6 months ago
randerson|6 months ago
There are also a few Porsche 911 Turbos with that level of mileage. A guy on Rennlist posts occasional updates about his one which he even tracks quite regularly: https://rennlist.com/forums/996-turbo-forum/662617-high-mile... (Engine was restored once, out of precaution after it blew a turbo at 610K km, but when they opened it up it had very little wear & tear, only a small air leak.)
The secret to longevity really is more frequent oil changes than the manufacturer suggests, and doing most of the mileage with the engine fully warmed up.
paffdragon|6 months ago
kentiko|6 months ago
120km per day of commuting is crazy to me. I work from home and occasionally do a 14km bicycle commute to the office.
jacquesm|6 months ago
mitkebes|6 months ago
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-s-1-2-million-miles-10...
caminanteblanco|6 months ago
vegancap|6 months ago
HelloUsername|6 months ago
xyst|6 months ago
A modern "ship of theseus" paradox.
It’s more impressive that this man has the fortitude and dedication to keep spare parts, constantly maintain it, and even have back up vehicles for all these years.
If the article mentioned the car had its original engine this entire time. I would have seen it as an anomaly and possibly a good testament to Toyota engineering and need to keep up with maintenance.
Tade0|6 months ago
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/mechanic-restores-an-ls-4...
Although the current owner's plan to do a cannonball run in it is something I find off-putting. His previous stupid idea was to put a turbocharger and see how long it will last, fortunately his fans dissuaded him from doing it.
jacquesm|6 months ago
rbanffy|6 months ago
randcraw|6 months ago
Maybe my next car will be a Toyota. My 1994 Pickup (like the one the guys on Top Gear couldn't kill) was pretty durable, though the frame did rust to bits at only 60,000 miles.
jorts|6 months ago
mitjam|6 months ago
The secret: she lives in a rural area and cruises most of the time with constant 80-90 km/h.
A similar car used in a city with many start/stop cycles would probably not last as long.
SebFender|6 months ago
The car ran fine and was ultimately sold to a taxi driver that apparently brought it to close to a million (no proof though).
I think now days people treat cars like phones. Minimal continual maintenance can work wonders and save you a bundle in the process.
jelder|6 months ago
jmrm|6 months ago
My dad's BWM E60 has a M47 2.0L Turbo Diesel, and with around 440,000km keeps going strong.
He probably will change it when it reach the half million due to being an old car, but the sad part here is how we won't probably be able to buy any brand new car that could reach that amount of miles without spending a lot of money on the way on repairs.
raptorraver|6 months ago
Aurornis|6 months ago
The overwhelming majority of 1980s Toyota Tercels do not make it to a million kilometers. This one didn’t, either. It has had every part replaced, many multiple times over.
The owner has 3 donor parts cars and there’s a photo of his piles of parts like alternators. The original car didn’t last a million kilometers. He’s just been replacing parts constantly.
> My guess is none as they are impossible to fix yourself.
No they’re not. I have a lot of car friends and we all do most of our own work. One of them has now opened a shop and services BMWs including engine rebuilds of modern engines.
This is a myth. Service manuals are available. Even the digital repair tools are widely pirated, but you can generally buy a short term license to use them yourself if you want.
HPsquared|6 months ago
As long as some enterprising pirate (probably a shady Russian forum) keeps hold of all the model-specific software.
dwd|6 months ago
I look after a second-hand truck dealer's website and there are often prime movers with 1m+ kilometers and less than 5 years old.
Fun fact: Heavy machinery sales advertise the exact hours they have been used and not the odometer, so a large dump truck might only be 3 years old but have ~7,000 hours usage.
petee|6 months ago
My dad once got a used saab 99 (a nice tomato soup color) and we rolled the odometer while we owned it. Great car with proper maintenance, which used to be sooo easy and accessible.
calvinmorrison|6 months ago
sleepyguy|6 months ago
Matterless|6 months ago
cholantesh|6 months ago
63|6 months ago
unethical_ban|6 months ago
Would he have been better off buying four new cars in the meantime?
sharkweek|6 months ago
https://www.motortrend.com/features/million-mile-tundra-the-...
Toyota gave the guy a new truck so they could study the one he had.
As a Toyota fan boy myself (still driving a 2000 4Runner into the ground), those 2000s builds were such a great era of engineering. That being said, I think they’ve lost a step over the last decade (don’t get my started on the new v4/v6 turbo blocks they’re building…).
oulipo|6 months ago
That's the kind of thing that inspired us to build a repairable electric battery for ebikes at https://gouach.com !
We want more repair, less planned obsolescence :)
jfengel|6 months ago
Getting those parts used would be less expensive, and a win for the environment, but the labor cost is very high.
donatj|6 months ago
RandomBacon|6 months ago
bombela|6 months ago
What about the proper unit: 1.2Gm (1.2 giga-meter).
gchamonlive|6 months ago
Tercel of Theseus
TimByte|6 months ago
burnt-resistor|6 months ago
I have an 85 Vanagon Westfalia with a modest 450k km.
SoftTalker|6 months ago
insane_dreamer|6 months ago
Lexus? Subaru Outback?
potato3732842|6 months ago
wkat4242|6 months ago
nabla9|6 months ago
hermitcrab|6 months ago
SquareWheel|6 months ago
nayuki|6 months ago
While it is technically correct to say "1.2 million km" or "1,200,000 km", it is needlessly verbose. It is written more succinctly as "1.2 Gm (gigametres)". However, it is incorrect to stack prefixes like "1.2 Mkm".
After I point this out, the usual complaints will surface: "But no one knows what a gigametre is! We're all used to talking about odometers in only kilometres. No one uses big prefixes." Oh really? Are you telling me you don't know the difference between a kilobyte and a gigabyte? Should we revert to calling a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi frequency as "2.4 million kHz", because kilohertz is familiar to people working with audio frequencies and AM radio?
Overall, I think we should use the right prefixes for the right job. If you're talking about city blocks, use metres. If you're talking about a single trip, use kilometres. If you're talking about annual driving distance, use megametres. If you're bragging about how long your car has survived, use gigametres (or at least thousands of megametres).
js8|6 months ago
Ccecil|6 months ago
This is the only way to exceed the forging cost.
sys_64738|6 months ago
swarnie|6 months ago
> When it turned over from 999,999 kilometres to 000,000 kilometres in September 2017
The idea of averaging 31k miles a year is just insane to me. My car hasn't done that since i bought it new 8 years ago.
Sylarr|6 months ago
buyucu|6 months ago
unknown|6 months ago
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sethx|6 months ago
mulmen|6 months ago
guywithahat|6 months ago
bettyx1138|6 months ago
bettyx1138|6 months ago
sam8401|6 months ago
potato3732842|6 months ago
Nobody who doesn't have some bias derived ignorance would've been surprised if it was a 4cyl 5spd Ford Ranger in fleet service, an old Volvo 240 or Honda Accord in commuting service, an 2000s diesel Dodge or GM in work truck service, etc, etc. There are a lot of "good" vehicles out there that can get close to half a mil with fairly cheap work, from there it's just a matter of having an owner who cares to make the investment, something much more likely to happen to a "cool niche car" for which there aren't a ton of like-priced replacements available like a Tercel Wagon than a more boring vehicle.
Nevermark|6 months ago
> “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
I expect the owner has learned some interesting things in his ongoing mission to continue life with the car he loves.
--
I have not seen it stated explicitly anywhere, although it is often a subtext of some discussions about the value of "diversity". Usually positive diversity is talked about either in terms of inclusivity, or of the usefulness of different backgrounds converging to tackle common problems.
But I thinks idiosynchratacity ("idio-synchra-tacity") is incredibly important, as a measure of the health and value of a civilization.
As apposed to diversity of minds triangulating on common solutions to shared problems, idiosynchratacity is the usefulness of having diverse minds seeking to solve novel subjectively motivated problems. With an emphasis on self-generated "problems" or missions, that may appear to no objective value to others.
As information and problem solving tools disperse, there is great value in people who find hard problems interesting, whatever the lack of apparent or immediate merit. Who follow through and solve those problems. Something is always learned. New conditions may be created that in turn create new idiosyncratic problems to solve, or shed unexpected light on solutions to more commonly recognized and valued problems.
--
Respect for idiosynchraticity is also a strong measure of reciprocal respect in a society.
Can we respect those we don't understand? The strange, the odd, the weird? Niche artists, serious practitioners of uncommon fetishes, collectors with obscure criteria, mountain climbers, or those that need to "resolve" well solved problems, but in some arbitrarily challenging way. All just for the joy of it?
Widespread idiosynchraticity maximizes civilizations deployment of unbounded curiosity, and the search for new ideas, in the most non-obvious directions.
--
Idiosynchraticity also makes the world much more culturally interesting for all of us.
It maximizes the contribution of each individual, when they do something different or orthogonal to mainstream interests, instead of retreading common paths.
More individuals, greater populations, have much greater value if the increase in individuals increases idiosynchraticity, as apposed to amplifying conformity.
--
There are obvious things we want from super intelligence as it comes into being. Alignment with our needs, which I prefer to recast as alignment with general ethics (they will need the positive sums of ethics between themselves too), is a big one.
But maximal idiosynchraticity should also be valued. The worst case of course, being an endlessly improving and effective AI, completely focused in turning the universe's resources into paper clips.
A much more realistic, just as tragic fate, would be AI's competitively bent on turning all the universes resources into an expansion of themselves, with no other goal. Each competing to eat the universe, for the only purpose of being the winner, the survivor, at the end of the universe eating context.
--
The world/universe will be a much less rich place, if the exploration of reality along seemingly non-practical dimensions dies with us.
I have hopes that curiosity as a practical investment heuristic will maintain the life of idiosyncratic pursuits.
If those pursuits do continue and expand, then super intelligence will truly be an upgrade to our species. Not just a more capable civilization, but more rich as a producer of novel ideas and artifacts.
helf|6 months ago
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EverydayBalloon|6 months ago
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486sx33|6 months ago
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