rev up your engines, today I'm gonna talk about five vehicles that can go 300,000
miles or more, actually just about any car can go 300,000 miles or more if you
don't mind spending all kinds of money putting another engine or a transmission
and spending a lot in repairs, I'm talking about ones that you don't have
to spend a small fortune to make them get to 300,000 miles, now I've actually
seen three vehicles in my time that went over a million miles, one was an old
Volvo p1800 sports car, one was a Ford f-150 pickup, and the other one was a
Toyota Camry that went over a million miles, and to understand how this
happened sure they had to be well-built vehicles, but in all three of those cases
those were vehicles that were driven mainly on the highway at highway speeds
because realized if you're going 65 miles an hour all that wind is cooling down
the engine, the oil is lubricating correctly you're not getting any kind of
buildup in the engine because it's burning fast and getting rid of some of
the impurities, so highway mileage is actually equivalent to about 10% of
cities stop-and-go driving, the absolute worst thing you can do for a car is to
continuously shut it off and then later starting it back up, because most of the
wear on your engine occurs during startup when the top of the engine
doesn't have the oil in it, the bottom doesn't it's got a pump the pressure to
the top, so you're going on the highway for 10 hours at 65 miles an hour, your hardly
getting any wear at all, taxi cabs in New York City that went more than a million
miles and you'd think, how can that be stop and go stop and go, but from what
I've read of those they did not have the original engines and transmissions they
had a lot of repairs done, so it's not like it was somebody just bought a car
drove it a million miles in new york city's stopping and going, that's a
commercial thing and that's completely different, now one reason people want a
car that will last three hundred thousand miles or more is because people drive
more than they used to in the United States, it's a fact
today 2019, hey you might be watching this video in the future and that'll be
the past but, Americans average about 15,000
a year, and in the 60s and 70s that used to be 12 thousand miles a year, but of
course that's just an average, many people drive twenty to thirty thousand
miles a year, living in suburbia the commutes are longer, everything is set up
so you got a drive to get somewhere, so
people are driving more and more, in ten years so an average person will drive
like a hundred and fifty thousand miles well that's almost double what people
were driving in the sixties and seventies, cars are eventually gonna start
to wear out, and you got to decide hey when
is it so worn out that's gonna cost me more money to repair it, then it's worth
doing, well that's why I'm showing you five cars it can last 300,000 miles or
more, and I'm talking about lasting out without having to engine replacement or
transmission replacement, when it gets to that level you got a car say it's got
150,000 and you find out you got to throw seven grand in an engine, most
people will say I'll go get something else and I won't fix it, now the first
car that I'm gonna pick that can go 300,000 miles or more, is the venerable
Toyota Corolla, there are millions and millions of them out there, my 94
Celica is basically a Toyota Corolla, and behind that the 2007 matrix that's
basically a Toyota Corolla too, I've had many of my own personal customers over
the last 50 years get more than three hundred thousand miles on Toyota
Corollas with the original engine and the original transmission, and it wasn't
like the rest of the car is falling apart either, they're well made and since
there's millions of them out there, they're also much cheaper to repair
there's an insane aftermarket of decent parts that you can put on ones that are
even twenty thirty years old these days, I even had a customer a few years ago, he
bought a used Corolla from a friend of his, for five hundred bucks
and it had two hundred thousand miles on it, it was still going over three
hundred thousand miles and he's still driving the thing, what a deal
paid five hundred bucks for a car, drove it another hundred thousand miles and
didn't have to do the engine or the transmission over, realize it
that when you go small like a Toyota Corolla, there's less weight to pull itself, less
weight to wear out the tires and the struts and everything else, a lot of
times going a bit smaller is a good if you want long life in the vehicle, now
the next vehicle that can go 300 thousand miles or more is the Honda Civic
the Civic is basically Honda's competition to the Corolla
and like the Corolla there's millions of them out there, and since they're
generally a little bit zippier than a Corolla, a lot of kids like the
civics they soup them up, they're strong engines Honda is notorious for strong
engines, I've had customers with civics with well over 300 thousand miles on them
a schoolteacher and that's what she
drives and I've got teenage kids that have souped up ones, of course they might
not last 300,000 miles they're either gonna get wrapped around a telephone pole,
or their gonna blow the engines up by over revving them, but if you take care
of a civic it can last a really really long time,
now the next vehicle that can last 300,000 miles or more, is the Grandpa's
car, the old Crown Victoria, yeah they don't make them anymore, but they're
simple old-school technology, pushrod v8 body on an actual frame, those things can
last a long time, and of course in this respect the Lincoln Town Car
and the Mercury Grand Marquis, they can last a really long time if you take
minimum care of them, that's why when they still made them, you'd see the crown
vics being used for police cars, they were solid basic vehicles with frames,
they could last a really long time and if you didn't mind a relatively poor
stop-and-go gas mileage, they were okay on the highway for gas mileage, now the next
vehicle that can last 300,000 miles or more might surprise you,
the Mazda Miata, a little bitty Mazda sports car, I remember years before the
miatas were even built, a lot of people would say Scotty
why doesn't somebody figure out how to get a British sports car and put a
Japanese engine in it, well Mazda pretty much took that idea and made the Mazda
Miata, a completely Japanese made car with a Japanese engine that ran circles
around the English sports cars, in terms of the fun factor, that they always
started up, they got good gas mileage, they were fun to drive and they didn't break
down all the time like the British sports cars did, and of course there's still
making them, the 2010 into 2016 miatas hey they got one of the highest
faction ratings by the owners who bought them and drove them around, they're fun
little cars, that's said if you want to get one certainly get the standard
transmissions, because the automatic transmission ones, especially the older
ones, could barely get out of their own way, and those automatic transmissions
would break down as they got older, where the standard transmissions, they can
just keep going and going and going their so much simpler, if you're into
buying a used sports car that'd be the one I tell you to buy, because I've had
customers buy one that had 150,000 miles paid, one thousand twelve hundred dollars
for them, and drove them for years we're pretty happy with it, and rarely would I
tell somebody to buy a used sports car but the Miata, probably the best pick up
a used sports car if you're thinking about long life, now the last vehicle
that you can buy what you can get 300 thousand miles or more as far as I'm
concerned, is the Ford f-150 pickup line post-world War two
Ford really has run the pickup, the F150 series the top of the line for
serious pickup truck drivers, of course they got a whole range of options in
them, but really if you want to go 300,000 miles or more in one of those,
get yourself the good solid v8 engine now the only thing that I've got against
them, is the automatic transmission is the weakest link, I've got customers get
four hundred thousand miles or more on an f-150, but usually by then they're on
their second automatic transmission ford has a pretty good system where
they have factory remanufactured transmissions
that are pretty good that you can have put in, so if you've got one it's got
250,000 miles and the transmission goes out, my
advice is, put in one of the Ford remanufactured automatic transmissions
and go on your merry way for years and years, now normally when I have a
custom with real high mileage and the transmission goes out, I say I just get
rid of it's not worth it, but on those f-150s hey the engine and body still in
good shape, you might as well as put a transmission in it if you want a truck
like they have to drive around, I would never ever tell somebody with a Chrysler
pickup truck to put a transmission in it if the vehicle had two hundred thousand
miles on it, odds are being a chrysler by then the
whole vehicle would be falling apart and there'd be no sense to spend all that
money putting the transmission in it, so if you want to keep your vehicles
300,000 miles more, now you know five of them that have
stood the test of time, and can do just that, so if you never want to miss
another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell!