On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 11:42 PM, Mark Tuovinen<mst@ak.net> wrote:
> I know a woman whom had a `83 - `85 (not sure exact year) Civic that after she was done with
> it passed it along to her daughter. �The daughter finally killed it around 600,000 miles and
> it had the original clutch. �I also came across a posting once for a `79 Civic that went
> 979,000 miles. �Not sure which was more impressive, that the car went that far or that
> someone drove it the distance.

 Now these here are starting to sound like respectable amount of
miles. My father had -82 Datsun Laurel 2.8 Diesel which went well over
1 000 000 miles. No clutch, engine, drivetrain repairs or anything.
And for goddness sake this is a japanese car! The engine and
drivetrain were in excellent condition when my father sold the car to
some guy who had horses and needed cheap car to tow those horses in
"horsetrailer" (wtf that thing is called where horses travel in a box
behind a car). The only thing in that car that needed repairs was the
body of the car: japanese cars of that era have more paint than metal
everywhere in the car. There were 2 young guys driving this car as a
first car after we got our driving licences: me and my brother. And I
can tell you that we both hit the pedal to the metal _very_ often for
over 4 years in a row. Eg. absolute full throttle to 75mph at least
every second time when leaving traffic lights. That car was quite
lightweighted, except for engine. It was also rear wheel driven so it
was very much fun to drive with excessive sliding. Perfect car for
young wannabe-racer. It actually outperformed most BMWs and audis in
acceleration from 0 - 75 mpg that my friends (or their fathers ;) had
at that time.

 Ive followed this list and discussion about mileage and it actually
makes me laugh when people are somehow thinking that some 200 000
miles without opening an engine is a lot for a car. Thats utter
bullshit. These guys have absolutely no idea how a good engine should
perform. 200k is just a warmup lap for real Engine.