Last month a 93 y.o Florida woman parked her car and gave up her keys. The car was a 1964 Mercury that she had owned since new. She clocked a huge 576,000 miles (927,000kms) behind the wheel over the last 48 year. She said, “I’m legally blind, so I can no longer drive my lovely Chariot. When I buy gas, I write down the mileage, the date and how many miles per gallon I got. I’ve never been a destructive person and I’ve just taken care of everything, except my husbands.” (she had three!).

Asked why she will not be giving it to her family she confessed “They couldn’t take care of it like I did”. Instead it will be heading for an antiques show in Wisconsin, and from there it will probably have its final resting place in a museum.

But that got us thinking….who, in the world, has driven the most miles in a single vehicle?

We came across a U.S. travelling salesman (from Wisconsin, too) who has owned his SAAB 900 since 1989, and, in 17 years did a massive one million miles.

This prompted SAAB to do an imaginative advertising campaign, offering a new SAAB to any owner who could show that his current car had travelled over a million miles. We’re not sure if there were any takers, as SAAB went broke last year, but not because of this generous offer, we guess!

However The Guinness Book of Records honours another American, in another Swedish car as the outright record holder.

Irv Gordon hails from New York State. He purchased his Volvo 1800S two door sports car new in 1966. He has eclipsed all previous world records, having logged up an astonishing 2.9 million miles (4.67m. kms).

And he ain’t finished yet! He was quoted in the summer of 2011 predicting that he will notch up the three million mile mark in time for his 73rd birthday next year.So then will he sell the car? Maybe, and the price? “A dollar per mile” says Gordon, but then has a re-think, “ Once I sell the car no one will invite me anywhere” he wryly reflects.

Quite a story and quite a mileage, but what about the Australian record? Well, we went onto the Carsales website to see the highest mileage car advertised for sale. We found some interesting examples, but when we looked into in a bit further we found they were all typographical errors:- 1969 Ford Capri, 55 million kms? Or the BMW 535i, that has 2.1m kms in the ad, but the owner claims it “ has low kms. for its age”. Noooo, don’t think so.

We’ve seen some evidence of cars reaching a genuine 900,000kms, but not one has cracked the million mark. Or has it? If so, we’d like to know. If you know of a really genuine high mileage car tell us about it here