With enough miles under our respective belts, at this point everybody’s got their own idea of which cars are the likeliest to accumulate a huge reading on their odometers. Even if your mileage might literally vary depending on where in the world you’re located, there are going to be a few of the same brands in the ballpark. A diesel Mercedes is going to shoot for a million, at least the ones made in the Golden Era of Daimler-Benz. A big-mile Toyota’s practically a given, as long as rust doesn’t get there first.
A Volvo 1800S is the highest-mile car in the world, and you probably won’t have a problem finding a diesel Volvo wagon with over 300,000 miles – at least in Northern Europe. One of the biggest-mile Volvos in the world is a 1979 Volvo 245 GL with the Volkswagen van-derived D6 six-cylinder diesel, originally sent to deliver mail and magazines in Northern Finland and retired at 1,630,000 miles, or 2,650,000 km.
Now, these are the likeliest big-mile cars, the ones that are the easiest to come up with. What car would really surprise you as a big-mile overachiever?
Collecting Cars is auctioning a Porsche 924 Carrera GT that has been in the same family since new, and it’s estimated to have done 530,000 km, or 330,000 miles. Estimated, because the speedometer (along with the odometer) was changed at one point, and it’s a five-digit odo anyway. The original gauge cluster follows with the car.
The full mileage has been calculated according to service records, which have been retained: they run from December 1980 to October 2025, and by October 2015 the car had done half a million kilometers or 310,000 miles.
The turbocharged, 210-horsepower 924 Carrera GT is a rare homologation special, one of 406 cars built, and while it’s not matching numbers – the engine was replaced after the timing belt let go – it takes huge dedication to keep a rare sports car in the same family for over 45 years and keep it accumulating miles like a family wagon would.
The Guards Red Porsche hasn’t been a trailer queen, which also shows, as some crash damage was repaired in 1999, at which point it had already been repainted once due to a carwash mishap. It also benefits from an older Strosek bodykit install and an earlier interior retrim. Currently, the auction is at 25,000 Euros, or $28,5k, with a day to go.
Another example is nearing the half a million kilometer mark: it’s a grey 1991 Lotus Elan currently for sale on the British AutoTrader.
The Lotus has some clearcoat damage, the Renault taillights look like they could use refurbishing, the left rear corner has been badly repainted, but that’s all fair – one look at the odometer reveals the car has 302,000 miles on it.
I’m sure there are plenty of Isuzu engines in the world with 300,000 miles or more on them, but there can’t be that many of those in Lotuses/Loti. And it’s even the turbocharged version! It’s being advertised at £4,995, or $6,600.
If you buy a car with big miles, there’s some sort of implied idea that you’re gonna be fine driving the hell out of it, as it’s likely to have seen worse, and the miles on it mean it will have been cheap. But with this sort of Kilometerkönig miles, the prospect changes. You have to keep it up! With, say, half a million miles just out of reach, you can’t just let it die for any reason. It has to pass the milestone, even if you haven’t been the one accumulating most of the miles. Push it to the limit, if you have to.
Images: Collecting Cars; AutoTrader
The least likely to reach a million IMHO is one owned by a driver unlikely to keep and maintain it. At 20k miles a year that means 50 years. Figure purchasing at 20 drive it until the driver is 70. Once you start getting more owners no one cares and maintenance drops off. The original owner is key.
V8 BMW, specifically the “hot v” twin turbo n63/s63. Came out around 2010 in the 5 and 7 series. Maybe the x5 as well. Was so bad BMW did a “special service campaign” and replaced two pages worth of parts for free outside of warranty. Might have been part of the class action lawsuit settlement. I dont think BMW did ANY durability testing on the thing
Sounds like BMW with their infamous plastic cooling system parts. In the last 25 years my family has replaced a combined 5 expansion tanks on BMWs.
Most cars from the 80s, 90s, and 00s in a northern climate will have rotted out well before this point.
I had an 05 Tahoe company car that made it to 500k. Granted it was southern driving and I put the miles on fast (70-80k per year). I also worked for an oil company, so it got regular oil changes. I drove that thing 300k miles with the check engine light on, no joke.
Any modern day Nissan – Particularly Altimas, Rogues and Sentras.
Also any Mercedes-Benz, VW, Audi or BMW built within the past 5-10 years.
Counterpoint: prophylactically replacing 1-2 standard tires with a donut spare renders the Altima indestructible.
Sadly re: the german cars I was thinking the same thing. Will the engine’s hard parts still be all original? Probably. Will it have been taken off the road anyway due to sheer weight of other expensive repairs adding up? Almost certainly.
Kinda doubt today’s turbo 4 powered anything will make it to 300K
I had 250k miles on a turbo 4 Cruze. Although that engine was definitely tired by that mileage. The aftermarket tune on it for 247k miles probably didn’t help.
That’s honestly pretty impressive, GM has such a mixed track record with engines, I’ve wondered if their turbo 4s were decent. I said this below but part of my general suspicion is that most cars probably aren’t taken off the road because of a big engine failure but rather the weight of high mileage + cumulative little problems making the car feel like a shitbox + one bigger repair that finally is the straw that breaks the camel’s back i.e. head gasket, turbo failure, big time suspension work etc. I could be wrong but it’s just my guess, I know very few people who’ve had an actual catastrophic engine failure.
I would have gladly kept that car. It didn’t meet my needs anymore and needed a clutch in the next year. Being too small and me having knee issues that daily driving a manual aggravated plus not having space for what was going to be a third car led me to selling it.
The gm 1.4L turbo is not a good one. Turbochargers tend to fail with alarming regularity, the cooling system has various common failures, the transmissions aren’t great, and so on. Plus the vehicles they’re put in are already underwhelming and on the bottom end of their respective segments.
Maybe the 8AR-FTS. Overbuilt, under powered, oil capacity of a bigger v6, direct and port injection.
I’d trust a Toyota engine more than most. I think my premise is that having a turbo just adds more parts + complexity so even if your rotating assembly and cylinder head are still in relatively good working order, there is an increased likelihood of expensive repairs that are increasingly hard to justify as mileage goes up.
My completely un-researched suspicion is most cars don’t get sidelined by engine failures but more likely smaller things adding up or expensive secondary repairs like head gasket or turbo failures (or the combination of knowing many little things need replacing and then something spendy comes along and I think a lot of people call it at that point on a high mileage car).
Glad you made that point. I got some grief in these comments a few months back for commenting that I bought a new F150 and intentionally sought out the coyote V8 instead of twin turbos. Sure, cylinder deactivation may prove a problem. But probably a lot less than with not one, but two turbos.
Yeh I just don’t see how over the long term turbos aren’t on average more expensive to maintain. More plumbing, vaccuum hoses, intercooler(s), the turbos themselves, etc, it’s just more stuff to fail over time even if it’s built to a high standard.
Jeep Wrangler/Grand Cherokee 4XE. I bet most wont even make it past 100k.
Any Mazda RX-8. This is coming from someone who adores rotaries, has a few currently, and has had even more. That engine was just too compromised to last to 300k miles. Especially the early 2004 and 2005 cars.
If the carbon build up didn’t get it, or the coils failing, the cats collapsing on themselves, engine flooding, then seals would go and you would need to replace the engine. Sublime chassis, but that engine just wasn’t it. I also hear over in Europe this era of Mazda will rust into a pile of dust merely by looking at water.
Adding to the commenter who said “hyper-expensive garage ornaments”, I’d add any weird stupidly-low-volume car which some member of the public managed to get their hands on. Thinking about something like Aging Wheels’ Lordstown Endurance. Would it last that long? Maybe. Is it likely to get to 300k? Well, why risk it on something so rare.
One of my Aston Lagonda’s sometimes claims to have gone 10,000,000,000 miles, I suspect that this might not be accurate as on other days it tells me it has gone 20 miles. It may be of vague interest that this is the parts car, donated to help keep the proper one going. To my shame and embarrassment I have three now,between them maybe 300,000 miles?
The big Bentley has very nearly reached the million point but I do coddle it a bit,engine rebuilds and stuff.
An early Vinfast
Ford Rangers (rest of world models) with the 2.0L eco-blue diesel with the “wet belt” timing belt. Low mileage ones have been dropping like flies, so much so that Ford has dropped the engine from the lineup.
FD RX7. Rotor seals made of the finest Japanese crystal.
I came here to say the RX8
I’d vote for Chrysler K-cars. Many of them didn’t make it out of the 80s, much less toward this kinda mileage. Not a lot on them that was designed to last.
Certainly not the K car I was stuck with in Driver’s Ed. That poor thing was begging to be put out of it’s misery well before 100K.
Any vehicle with a blue F*rd oval on the front and/or rear.
Hey now! My ’64 F100 coach-built crewcab is still running strong at 350k miles with no rebuild. There are exceptions.
They still believed in quality over quantity back in 1964.
And pre union
I’ve probably seen more Fords (including Lincoln & Mercury) with over 300K miles than any other brand, and I’ve seen a lot. Add in the ones I’ve seen at auctions (Manheim & CarMax) and the gulf widens further.
Volvo would probably be the highest percentage of vehicles seen with over 300k miles, though, but not by much.
Any of the hyper expensive garage ornaments and inflation hedges. I love that Koenigsegg and Pagani exist, but they break 300k I want to hear the story.
That’s what I was going to say. Most of those cars won’t even hit 30k
Hard to hit 300k at 1k a year
I remember it being newsworthy that a new run of tires for the XJ220 was being made. Anything where it’s not guaranteed you can get one of the most fundamental parts regularly just isn’t going to be driven that much.
I think most new cars will go 300k if you drive them enough to accumulate it quickly quickly.
Apparently GM has figured out a way of shearing the rocker arms on some of their engines by one group of engineers having the valve lifters, disabled and enabled using oil pressure, and another group of engineers figured out how to run the engine with very low oil pressure. Aside from half baked nonsense like that between modern metallurgy and modern oil, wear seems to be a solved problem and it takes added features to make a car fail.
My uncle put about 300k on his 944 turbo in about 6 or so years untill his coroner crashed it in a cross country rally. I think it had been in at least two, maybe three one lap of Americas. He put 100k on it the first year he had it. He got one engine replaced under warranty, apparently it really didn’t like being run flat out pulling a trailer full of tires for 4 hours at a time.
Mercedes sedans from the 80s and 90s basically last forever. A W114 we had made it to 300,000 miles. When a tree fell on it. We have it to som farm workers who used chains, jacks, and hammers to make it drivable and pot another 25 years and 300,000 miles on it. From what I hear, this is no longer true.
His coroner?
Tell us more about your uncle’s personal coroner! I have yet to add one to my household staff – is it worth it?
Stupid spell check, should be codriver.
But cod are saltwater fish. You don’t normally find them in rivers.
So are sharks, right?
“How Far Up the Mississippi Has a Bull Shark Been Found?
Bull sharks, known for their ability to tolerate freshwater, have been documented surprisingly far inland. The furthest verified sighting of a bull shark in the Mississippi River is near Alton, Illinois, approximately 700 miles upstream from the Gulf of Mexico.”
https://www.ewash.org/how-far-up-the-mississippi-has-a-bull-shark-been-found/
You’re going to need a bigger boat.
Elon Musk’s Roadster, hell it might already be over a million miles now.
Anything with a traditional, sealed for life, maintenance free CVT.
eCVT equipped vehicles will likely last longer than 300k miles.
Insane CVTS last the warranty plus 10 miles
cybertrucks.
My car, given how rarely it’s operable!
–A chorus of Autopians
A new M5.
Failing that, any GM with an L87 in it apparently.
Most M5’s barely make it to 100k without replacing all the parts in the motor that move
Oh man, this reminded me of the time I took a ride with my stepdad as he was trying to sell his raggedy 924 he bought and never drove and the thing overheated on the freeway 2 hours from home. I don’t recall the diagnosis, but it left on a flatbed and was never seen again.
But I’m going to say a BMW Mini Cooper. I’ve had 4. They all left on flatbeds themselves. Some from catastrophic failure, one from a kid hooning his 3 series in a park-and-ride it was parked at and totaling one. They’ve been the definition of “here for a good time, not a long time.”
Maybe it’s just a family curse?
I had a 2007 Mini Cooper S for three months. Fun to drive, but by far the crappiest modern car I have owned. German complexity with British reliability.
I’m gonna stretch it and say Hyundai or Kia….any of them.
Judging by the comments in the RAV4 article, Volkswagen Tiguan.
Easy answer. Peel P50. Top speed of around 40? Terrifying to drive on the road. Sure, it may be somewhat mechanically solid, but you’re gonna have to WORK to get it to 300K miles.
Morgan 3 wheeler, for similar reasons.
In that vein, any of the modern trikes – Slingshots, etc. From what I see, very few owners are doing much more with them than driving around town so everyone can see them.
Agreed! I’ve always had a soft spot for the Morgan, though. So cool.
Probably my favorite Matchbox acquisition over the past year is my 3 Wheeler. But it blew my mind to find out it’s not a model of the original, but rather a car produced this century!
Meant to respond here, but it got posted elsewhere on this article. I didn’t know matchbox made a three wheeler, and I was all set to go on a quest to find one. But somehow, Amazon takes the joy out of some of these things. It’s too easy to find now.
If you’re stateside, Dollar Tree is your friend. No guarantees a given one will have it, but the odds are good… Quest on!
Saw one at the theater, the owner had driven across the state to visit town about a 200 mile trip one way. Some people put miles on them.
But Morgans are bought by the sort of people who would try to put 300,000 miles on a car. Religiously keeping to the service schedule and preventative maintenance every weekend.
There’s always a few in every car culture, but I reckon Morgan get more of them than most.
Very true! I aspire to be one of those people someday…