21 replies to this topic

[Elsa Hoffmann]

received via email




MAN OWNED & DROVE THE SAME CAR FOR 82 YEARS

Oldest running car and driver in history

THIS MAN OWNED & DROVE THE SAME CAR FOR 82 YEARS

They certainly don't make them like that anymore.

Can you imagine having the same car for 82 years!

"How Long Have You Owned a Car?"
Mr. Allen Swift ( Springfield , MA.) received this 1928 Rolls-Royce Piccadilly-P1 Roadster from his father, brand new - as a graduation gift in 1928.

He drove it up until his death last year.....at the age of 102. He was the oldest living owner of a car that was purchased new. Just thought you'd like to see it.

It was donated to a Springfield museum after his death.

It has 1,070,000 miles on it, still runs like a Swiss watch, dead silent at any speed and is in perfect cosmetic condition. (82 years). That's approximately 13,048 miles per year (1087 per month)...



1,070,000 that's miles not kilometres!!

That's British engineering of a by gone era.. I don't think they make them like that anymore.

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[Foveola]

Elsa:

What a story. I suspect it got a little difficult finding parts for it!

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers

Randy

[Rags]

Elsa:

What a story. I suspect it got a little difficult finding parts for it!

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers

Randy

You mean it could break?...

Nice story... thanks for sharing

Rags

PS: Mercedes used to have a million mile club (usually diesel engines)

Edited by Rags, 17 January 2013 - 15:29 .

[wildoat]

Elsa thanks for sharing this

The mileage is not particularly exceptional except that we are talking about a car made
a relatively long time ago, I imagine it had many of it's original parts replaced.

It really bugs me that modern cars, even marques which are considered premium brands are not
actually made to last and modern marketing tries to dictate we should change our cars far
more frequently than we need to. The truth is because the industry employs so many people if we didn't change
our vehicles frequently there would be massive job losses, seems the way of the world in general.

[armando_m]

Great story, thanks for sharing it

[Millirehm]

Nice story. Thanks Elsa for sharing

It really bugs me that modern cars, even marques which are considered premium brands are not
actually made to last and modern marketing tries to dictate we should change our cars far
more frequently than we need to. The truth is because the industry employs so many people if we didn't change
our vehicles frequently there would be massive job losses, seems the way of the world in general.

Yes we are living in the nasty age of planned obsolescence

[JohnBrew]

Good for him. Well, it should have lasted this long. Every part on that car was made to very heavy duty specifications. My uncle had one and I helped him remove the starter one time. Thing was quite large and weighed a ton.

[Fred Nirque]

And elsewhere on the net the car had 170,000 miles on it, driving 2,000 miles a year. Much more believable. What a difference a "0" makes....


Edit: here's perhaps the most informative link:
http://www.automotiv...-picadilly.html

Edited by Fred Nirque, 17 January 2013 - 22:55 .

[Michael Kan]

Fred,

170,000 miles is correct. He was a lifetime member in our Rolls-Royce Owners' club and the car is still in the northeastern US.
If I remember well, the facts quoted by the OP are not entirely correct either, but I cannot recall the story. I think the car belonged to his parents first.

[Fred Nirque]

170K with a ground-up restoration sounds eminently more the sort of life a Roller would have had. I'd be hoping for at least that sort of mileage, if not more from my 2011 car without a ground-up restoration thrown into the timeline. You do get what you pay for, though, so a $12,000 car won't do this sort of mileage as the norm, but pay over $50K and modern cars will last, run reliably, not need constant servicing and repairs, with possibly the main Achilles heel being the more modern components involving electronics and computers. While expensive in parts, the repair is usually modular and relatively straight forward. I think people forget too easily what running a car even as late as the 1970's made vehicles involved in fuel consumption, short service intervals, dodgy motor electrics, lousy brakes, 2 or 3-speed transmissions, poor heating & air-con (if even fitted), wipers, seats (seats! - remember vinyl bench seats?), corrosion resistance, poor handling, cross-ply tyres, and almost certain injury or even death in anything from a low-speed collision upwards, etc etc etc etc. You wouldn't want one unless you were a collector.

People are too dismissive of modern cars. My previous car, a 1989 Honda Prelude 2.0si 4WS never (that's never) failed me to the point that I was stranded or had to call for help in nearly a quarter of a century of driving. The closest I came to that was when the clutch slave hydraulic hose failed and I had to drive to the repairer sans clutch pedal - no big deal, just involved a bit of anticipation with gear changes and taking off from rest using the starter motor . I finally retired it in March of 2011, with 345,000km (214,313 miles) registered and all mechanicals still original (including the suspension, clutch & front brake pads - although two reco half-shafts & CV joints were fitted at around 240,000km), with the engine still using only 1 litre of oil between 10,000km services just as it had done from new. The gearbox failed about a year after I sold it, whilst being driven by the new owner's learner-driver son. The bearings had started to rumble, and I guess they pushed the repair off too long.

That is the sort of mileage reasonable quality/moderately expensive cars these days will reliably do, and we really shouldn't be so quick to swoon over top-price 1920's junk in comparison. I guess that's why the Internet poster added that "million" zero, because that would have been exceptional, but 170,000mi including a complete ground-up rebuild? - ...meh.

Edited by Fred Nirque, 18 January 2013 - 01:26 .

[schwett]

i agree with fred. nostalgia for the old dinosaurs is like nostalgia for living in the victorian era. pretty from a distance and full of ornament and style but ultimately dirty, brutish, and painful.

it's pretty likely that old thing spewed hundreds of times more pollutants into the air for every mile it drove than a modern car, and i'm sure it didn't get to whatever mileage it obtained without careful maintenance and some replacement parts.

my first car was an acura integra, absolutely stripped, not even a radio, A/C, or power windows. it ran without a single mechanical problem through all kinds of teenage and 20something shenanigans for something like 150,000 miles. all i did was change the oil and other routine servicing, despite driving at high speed, in the snow, up and down san francisco's notorious hills in my first manual transmission, etc. next was a prelude which was equally reliable, and finally another honda, an s2000, which has also had absolutely zero mechanical problems.

old cars may be stylish, but they are terrible performers in every way!

[JohnBrew]

Yeah, I agree with both Fred and Schwett. One of my neighbors bought a '65 Mustang convertible (restored). We were discussing this because I started university in one. So other than nostalgia why in the world would someone buy all that old design technology? Drum brakes, a really shitty automatic transmission (though mine was a 4-speed manual), crappy live axle rear suspension, cheap vinyl interior - I could go on and on but you get the idea. I started remembering all the things which went wrong during the several years I owned it and it wasn't pretty. With (most) modern automobiles reliability issues are a thing of the past.

[Rags]

Hehehe... Reminds me of the 52 Jag I had in '60. A gold XK120, wire wheels, side curtains and white wall tires. Whoa that was a chick magnate.

So my bride needed a car in mid 70s and she had loved that Jag. I knew she couldn't shift well, so I looked for an automatic and found one, a 1960 XK140 Coupe. I had the engine pulled & rebuilt, redid the interior and had it painted it white.

It was a sweetheart. After two weeks she couldn't drive it, she couldn't handle parallel parking because of no power steering. Duh..

She finally got one she liked and could drive in 2005 (gone now) a XK8 in Candy Apple Red.

I agree with Fred and others, that the old cars have warts, but there is an element of value in appreciation of some of them.

For example; I wish I had my old '52 Porsche club racer; an amateurish build for a car that couldn't handle worth a damn (didn't hold a candle to my Alpha). It was before Dr Porsche was "factorized"; it was probably built in his garage in Austria. It would probably be worth $775,000 or more and bought by the Porsche museum. (I'll post a picture if there's interest)

If I would have known I was living history I would have paid more attention... jeeze...

I wonder how much the Rolls is worth.

Rags

[lenmil]

I once had a Datsun 260Z 2+2 . Loved it except for the cost keeping it on the road. Had to sell it in the end. It needed too much work doing to the body work. The engine only had 54 thousand miles on it.

[wildoat]

Rags I demand you post a photo of the old Porsche,please lol.

[Fred Nirque]

This nostalgia/collecting thing seems to be genetically bred into us, particularly the males of our species.

As noted above, I am of clear head when it comes to new cars vs old cars - for a day-to-day drive there's nothing compares to a modern car. Get in, start, drive.
For tens of thousands of miles there will be little more necessary, apart from scheduled servicing around 8,000-12,000 miles, replacing worn tyres, and putting relatively little fuel in the tank (compared to the gas-guzzlers of yore).

That said, the car (if you can call it that) I want more than anything at the moment is a new Morgan 3-wheeler. Frame of wood, updated 1930's design, no roof, heating, or even side windows. Go figure. But it would be for fun and something to talk about, the Land Rover Freelander 2 would still be my daily, comfortable, quiet, reliable and almost anonymous ride.

I have a friend who has been restoring his Morgan 4/4 for over 40 years now - it's still in pieces, but if talking about cars, whatever he drives at the moment never gets a mention, - it's Morgan-this, Morgan-that. It used to be his daily drive back in the 1960's, but broke down in the early '70's near his family's farm in the country and has since lived in various stages of disassembly in barns, basements, sheds and warehouses as the never-ending "restoration", including him using his woodworking skills to make a new ash frame from scratch, attempts to precede his descent into old age and ultimate demise. Sort of like a stone-age caveman painting the walls of his cave with scenes of successful hunts of his youth, I guess.

[Rags]

Rags I demand you post a photo of the old Porsche,please lol.

My Jag (4/60)


My Porsche. after my bride had just moved it about 2' into a high fendered 57 Dodge (WTF & other choice words). The car stood only about 36" off the ground, the windshield was 8"+/-


My brides last car (her last Jag - was pretty good)


Ahh the memories

Rags

Edited by Rags, 19 January 2013 - 00:37 .

[wildoat]

Good on you Rags. thanks for sharing.
Loving the XK120, poor little Porsche hope you made her better

[vivionm]

Modern cars are very good. My 2012 VW Golf GTi gives better fuel economy than the Golf GTi I had in 1974, despite being heavier and much more powerful. It also is much safer, with better tyres, suspension, brakes, roadholding and crash safety. And, in inflation adjusted terms, it is cheaper to buy.

I love old cars but would not wish to own one.

[Rags]

Good on you Rags. thanks for sharing.
Loving the XK120, poor little Porsche hope you made her better

Nah, I sold it for $300

It was one of the worst cars I had owned (the worst was a 1960 Alpha convertible - like the one in La Dolce Vita). The Porsche would skate (aquaplane) in a second - weight allocation was bad. It was too light in front, I had to put sand bags in the front trunk, especially in icy conditions. It was really a VW except for the body shell and a larger block bored to 1000cc.

Rags