A newspaper delivery contractor since the 1960s, Hebley’s Corolla ticked over the two million kilometre mark earlier in the month, the NewZealand Herald reports.
Hebley drives around 5000km a week as part of his job, so gets the car serviced every two weeks.
Hebley got the 1993 Toyota Corolla in 2000 and it had only done 80,000km at that point.
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 wheel bearings changed, but besides that the car is basically 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 that I believe it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t.”
Sherman said a combination of the product, frequent servicing, and the way Hebley has looked after the vehicle is the reason it has continued to push on.
“That era of Toyota has such built-in reliability.
“You miss any of those out and it just wouldn’t work.”
The highest amount of kilometres Sherman had seen on a car besides Hebley’s was around the 700,000km mark.
“Nothing like this. In my whole career, that is the highest I have seen.”
Hebley, who has driven well over three million kilometres total since he started delivering newspapers in 1968, said he hasn’t got sick of driving just yet.
“How could you not love this car? Whatever you do, it just bounces back.
“The car might outlast me at this point.”
How far has your car made it so far?
This article originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald and was reproduced with permission. Posted fromwww.news.com.au
