Today, May 12, is National Odometer Day. The modern odometer is credited to William Clayton, a Mormon pioneer who attached a mileage counting device to his horse-drawn wagon in 1847. The device tracked wagon wheel’s number of revolutions as his party trekked west from Omaha to Salt Lake City. Today the odometer is an integral part of automotive life. We’ve gone from analog rollers to digital tickers, and whether on a garage queen or a hoopty, they provide a window into the life the car has lived.
What’s the craziest odometer reading you’ve ever seen?
The most entertaining comment by next week will receive a prize. Scroll down to see the winner of last week’s QotW, “Why do you like driving?“.
There were so many great comments to this question that it was hard to pick just one. Some, like Walt and BlitzPig, got philosophical. Others, like エーイダン‘s were simply funny. Answers ranged from steve‘s extremely practical one to StreetSpirit‘s emotion-filled response.
A few, like dankan and Fred Langille, mentioned that driving satisfied a deep longing that stemmed from childhood. Others, such as Kyuusha Corner and Taylor C. illustrated how different types of cars can evoke different feelings.
The most popular category of answer mentioned some type of melding between driver and machine. al said it was as close to flying as an earthbound creature can get. Negishi no Keibajo emphasized the honing of a skill. Franxou simply loved the thrill of it.
The winner this week is Alan, a rare back-to-back champion, who used downright poetic words to describe the act of motoring:
Driving, to me, is harnessing the mechanical and chemical ingenuity of man to propel myself through time and space. It’s the myriad and deep sensorial pleasures born of thousands of painstakingly engineered, manufactured, and assembled parts reciprocating, cycling, and acting. It’s the immense satisfaction of muscle memory, concentration, and precision required to drive a powerful, potentially deadly machine with grace and finesse.
It’s engineering, culture, aesthetics, personal expression, history, family, busted knuckles, heartbreak, passion, and above all, freedom.
Omedetou, your comment has earned you a set of decals from the JNC Shop!
the craziest odometer readings i saw are the one i didn’t see!
got my old civic at the miraculously low mileage of 67 XXX sold it around 89 XXX so my immature and unobservant brain comfortably zoomed past 69 420 and even 80085!
oh no, i think i fell into the spam filter again.
Back when I worked at the local import repair shop we had a customer with a 1988 Camry with 450,000 miles on it that we serviced. This was back in the 90’s. The only non routine repairs it ever had was the replacement of a couple temp sensors, Everything else was normal routine maintenance. She ran normal dino oil and changed it religiously at 3000 mile intervals.
That was peak Toyota.
It is the reading I have had with EVERY new car we’ve bought … when the odometer has those insidious numbers … in any combination BTW … of “666”! Superstitious you say? Scoffing you do? You betcha Red Ryder! Any combo of “666” makes me quickly (but not speeding, no sense in ASKING for more to occur, right?) want to keep on till that “7” comes up. The absolute worst time is 6s across the board, on Friday the 13th … Fortunately, we have a long way to go on both cars until we reach either milestone … and ZI’m not looking forward to it. May my elephant figurine with the raised trunk glued to the top of the dashboard protect us!
Back in 2021: I saw 540,999 miles on a running-driving-stopping-steering 1984 Nissan 300ZX 2+2 that was listed on Copart. The CarFax was a MILE long. Spent its entire life near Sacramento CA. It was twice designated a GROSS POLLUTER. Both times, the owner repaired it an kept it on the road. I should have bought it.
Just to prove I wasn’t BS’ing on this one:
https://www.reddit.com/r/300zx/comments/n93e3o/for_sale_a_running_and_driving_1985_z31_with/
Domo, domo. Cars make me act funny.
I can’t recall the single highest odometer, thought it was def on a Toyota and north of half a million miles.
Between my two LS430s and 2nd-gen 4Runner, I’ve got just about 1,000,000. If I factor in my AW11, which had a 20V swap and is therefore rightly disqualified I think, we’re talking 1.3 million or so.
“National Odometer Day”?
A friend of mine has an early-80s Honda GL500 Silverwing in his shed. It’s not a particularly collectible bike, and his is in rough shape. It’s pretty unspectacular until you look at the dash and see the odometer reading-
24 miles from new
Pretty much every car I’ve ever owned I put on more than 250K miles. Unfortunately,all the cars I had around the 400K+ range had odometers that only went to 99,999.9, so they never had a crazy odometer readings. They just spun over and reverted to pristine low-mileage examples!
Just today, I reached 410,000 km on my Isuzu Luv in Cordoba, Argentina. Someone on the opposite side of the country (Mar del Plata, Argentina, about 1,100 km away) had the same thing happen at almost the same time. A strange reading and cosmic coincidence, all in the same type of vehicle, which we just happened to share in a WhatsApp group.
Too cool!
I bought a Nissan NX Coupe back around 2018 with the odometer at 25,125 km or so on it. It was practically a brand new car, even has that newish interior smell. It was up for sale for about a month or so before I got to it, Old couple apparently won it in a raffle back it 1993 and barely drove it. I had a crappier red one at the time and really wanted a better one so I jumped on the chance to get it when I saw it for sale. Its at around 55,000km now and I put a few little reversible mods on it and kept all the original parts (sports exhaust, high flow cat). Even managed to score some original NX-R alloy wheels from a tow truck towing an NX-R to the wreckers on the highway. Is it one of the lowest mileage surviving NX coupes around? Who knows…
I travel for a living so every once in a while, I’ll ask the airport hotel shuttle driver how many miles are on it. Very typical are 400,000+. One guy started with “Well, it’s on its third engine…” LOL. These are like 3 year old 2 tons.
169069 on my Mazda 3. I even took a picture of it. I wasn’t in the car 100 miles after that. That 169169 eluded me.