A New Zealand man’s 1993 Toyota Corolla has covered over two million kilometers, and the car continues to run efficiently to this day. He noticed that his 1993 Corolla reached the milestone in March of this year. Mr. Hebley works as a newspaper delivery contractor and drives 5,000 km a week. He quickly accumulated miles through his work.
He bought the workhorse vehicle in 2000 when the Corolla only had 50,000 miles (80,000 km) on the odometer. Besides general and frequent servicing, there haven’t been a whole lot of changes made to the Toyota. The cambelt has been replaced almost 20 times and the wheel bearings changed, but besides that, the car is original.
“It still has the original engine and transmission,” said local mechanic John Sherman. “If I hadn’t worked on it, I wouldn’t believe it.” I wouldn’t believe it could do two million without something going wrong. It’s only because I know it that I believe it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t.”
Mr. Sherman attributed the car’s impressive performance to the reliability of older Toyota vehicles as well as Mr. Hebley’s frequent service and constant maintenance of the vehicle. He claimed that he had never seen anything like the distance traveled by the Corolla, recalling that the closest thing he had seen was a car that had driven 700,000 kilometers.
Hebley still makes his long drives across New Zealand’s North Island every week and says he has no plans to give up driving any time soon. Mr. Hebley thinks the Corolla “could outlast me at this point.”
