The Road to Three Million
In 1966, Irv Gordon purchased his Volvo P1800 brand new. He didn’t do it expecting that he’d accomplish anything particularly noteworthy, he was just sick of his other cars breaking down and took a friend’s advice to check out the Volvo.
Today, Irv has nearly 2.8 million miles on his car, a world record. In fact, Irv set the record back in 1998 when his car reached the 1.69 million mile mark. But Irv still plans to squeeze some more mileage out of his little red car. 3 million miles is his goal, and if history is any gauge of the future, it would be surprising if he chose to stop there.
Irv has a great sense of humor about his car. The seatbelts confuse nearly every passenger and when asked if his car has air conditioning, Irv replies, “Yeah, the 465. Four windows at sixty-five miles per hour.”
As he reminisced about the days when he first started driving his car, he recalled that gas was 18 cents a gallon, and that he was shocked when it rose to 25 cents. Oh how far we’ve come.
Irv’s journey has had some bumpy times, though, as you would expect when you drive the same car for over forty years. He’s been backed into in parking lots, bumped by trucks while driving, even had incidents with a school bus, twice. In all the mishaps, the nose has been crushed and the sides popped inwards. “But that’s why they put paint in a can,” said Irv.
Surprisingly, Irv’s car is only on its second engine. They certainly don’t make cars like that anymore. No car company would ever make any money. Irv does all of the routine maintenance himself, but does rely on a trusted mechanic to take care of the big jobs. After all, he’s got a goal to meet.
So what happens once he reaches three million? Well, Irv jokes that he might try to sell it for a dollar per mile he’s put on it, that way he could retire. He’s just waiting for the offers to come in. If Volvo was smart, they’d buy the car from him and proudly display it in their headquarters.
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