That is 1.4 mill kilometers.... http://www.autoblog.com/2006/07/05/holden-owner-upgrades-after-22-years-869-000-miles/ It makes you wonder, if the autoindustry was able to make such a great products (56 mpg, no major repairs) 20+ years ago, whatever happened that we ended up with cars averaging 15 mpg?? As one poster pointed out: "GM can't risk importing a car that sells at a reasonable price point, is reliable and durable, and yields 56 mpg. People would buy them, recommend them to friends and relatives, and happily keep them for years. It is ill-equipped to cope with success!" Another autoindustry news: Toyota's Camry is more "domestic" than Ford's F-150. I guess it is time to start to buy Ford again...
Here is a guy who has over 2.5 million miles on his volvo 1800. Original engine, but did have a valve job. http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/09-15-2004/0002251254&EDATE=
A Toyota Camry may be more domestic, but it will still out last a Ford, simply because of the japanese design/engineering and incremental improvements they have been making for decades.
I agree TD, I have a North American made Corolla with 167k on it and it drives like 60k on it, albeit a few sweaks here and there. I do maintain both of my Toyotas well, but I believe the QC process is generally better for most Japanese cars, the exception being Nissan recently, they have gone down according to news I have heard. For those that are interested, whether foreign or American, don't ever buy the first years production or vehicles that come from new mfg plants. Many problems, including Nissan's recently, have been do in part to a new mfg plant. Heck the first year Toyota produced the Sequioa it had some engineering problems. I guy I worked with ate the loss and traded it in for the 2nd year gen model, the could never fix no matter how many times he took it to the dealer.
I have an 87 Mercedes 260E with 300K miles on it. Still runs pretty damn good all things considered. Although the motor is great, not much else works in it.
My dad put 350k miles on a new Volvo DL in the 80's in like 6 years. He did not have any serious mechanical problems with it. I don't know if that is still possible now that it is owned by Ford.
QC department doesn't have as much to do with it as production specs. The japanese automakers produce a more reliable car because they have tighter specs on many of the individual parts. QC departments accept/reject according to the standards they are given. If the specs are loose, 100% accuracy in QC won't help. The american automakers are at a huge disadvantage because of past agreements with labor unions resulting in unnecessary expenses such as the so called "rubber rooms". What it comes down to is that if GM and Toyota were to produce the exact same car, it would cost GM thousands more to do it. In order to save money and bring costs down they must have loose production specs because tight specs cost more money.