Broken Records

As some of you might know (or might not know, given my only reader is Isis the dog, and border collie mixes are world-renowned for their absolute inability to read English), Mr. Irv Gordon set a significant milestone last week by clocking three million miles in his 1966 Volvo 1800S. For some perspective, that's 380 trips around our planet, three times the distance Apollo 11 travelled, and about 1/30th the distance to the Sun. Few people will put on that many miles in their lifetime.

Some Perspective

Now, the mechanical achievement of this car is mind-boggling. At the time, most cars were not expected to run much past 100,000 miles, and certainly not thirty times that. By average lifespans, this car is a month-old may fly. A rose that blooms for over a year. A ninety year old guppy. A water heater that lasts three centuries. It's 15,120 in dog years.

Can I do it, too?

No, you can't. How Irv got there is a two-part equation. The first is mechanical. The car is powered by an over-built 1.8 liter inline 4 cylinder engine that makes about as much power as a really fast sewing machine. Cruising along the highway it's under about as much stress as a dog napping in the sun. Couple an over-built and understressed engine with meticulous maintenance and you get above average miles. It helps that these are very easy to maintain machines with astonishingly great parts availability. But, as mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, Irv's Volvo doesn't have above average miles, it has astronomical miles

That brings us to part two: the person behind the wheel. If the average person drives 15,000 miles per year and drives for 50 years, they've covered 750,000 miles (again, these are rough order of magnitude numbers, caveat emptor, ymmv, beware of dog, etcetc). So, how to get to three million? A long daily commute to work is a big chunk of the equation, but far overshadowed by the long-distance road trips. My back-of-the-armpit calculation gives me something in the ball park of 25,000 miles spent per year on his above-average commute. Three million miles over the last 49 years is a bit over 60k miles a year. Simply put, the guy must love to travel. A lot. But, even loving travel isn't enough. This is 49 years of more or less driving a single car. I don't know about you guys, but I'm on my sixth car that's been titled in my name, and I'm only 222 in dog years. I love road trips and expect I'll break a million miles on my own odometer, but there's no chance I'll do it all in the same car.

The secret sauce

This is where we put the two together. Take a person that loves travel enough to cover over three million miles behind the wheel and couple him with a car that's not just capable of that sort of mileage, but engaging enough for the driver to want to keep it through all those miles. That is the perfect storm of Irv Gordon and his Volvo 1800. Notice also, that I've called it a milestone and not a record. The three million mile record has already been broken, and will be broken every time Irv gets behind the wheel. Keep rolling, Irv.

See more at http://www.3millionreasons.com