Once upon a time there were cars that lasted a lifetime. That always started, even when it was minus 20 degrees outside. That you forgot to take to the mechanic and yet they never left you on the road. Cars made to last and to grind out kilometres or, in this case, 3 million miles.
3 million miles
This is the story of one of these cars, a Volvo P1800, a red coupé with a very European design that set an impressive record: marking the number 3 followed by six zeros on its odometer. A number that translated into kilometres means 4.8 million. Indeed, many are the kilometres of asphalt that this car has put under its wheels in fifty years of activity.
Volvo P1800
The P1800 was a project that Volvo undertook to fill a gap in its commercial offering. The car design was entrusted to Frua of Turinwhich created an elegant and original line with three volumes and barely pronounced rear fins. From a technical point of view it was equipped with a longitudinal front four-cylinder engine of 1,778 cc and rear-wheel drive with a rigid axle. The refined mechanics of the vehicle were also well illustrated by the four disc brakes and the Borg-Warner four-speed manual gearbox with electric overdrive. Power was respectable for its time: 96 horsepower. It was famous in its day for being Simon Templar's car (played by actor Roger Moore) in the successful television series The Saint.
The lucky owner of this Volvo P1800 is Irv Gordon, 73 years old from Long Island (USA), a retired science teacher who had already entered the Guinness Book of Records after driving 1.69 million miles. This is in fact the highest mileage ever recorded by a car with a single owner. A relationship, that between Irv and his Volvo, that immediately sparked off sparks. As he himself says.
"I bought my Volvo on a Friday, before a festive weekend. As soon as I got into it I fell in love, I couldn't stop driving it. The following Monday I went back to the dealer. I had already covered 1500 miles and was due for my first service. The really incredible thing about this car, however, is not the amount of miles covered, but the way it looks today. It still has the same engine, the same transmission, the same axles and even the same car radio. And the bodywork is still a spectacular red.
A new way of producing that is more ancient
But what this story leaves us with is not so much a smile for this extraordinary car's record, but a sense of sadness for this lost wealth. Cars that could accompany you for years or decades, cars to which you could become attached and with which you could share broad seasons of your life. In a world where the cars after 100,000 km begin to break down and requiring the help of a mechanic so frequently that they have to be replaced, the story of this Volvo P1800 generates a subtle melancholy and the idea that progress is sometimes not the wonderful thing that the advertisement says it is.
Perhaps it is time for some manufacturers, not only of cars, to start producing objects by abandoning the logic of planned obsolescence. We need it badly.
Source: Autoblog.com
