Wow, 980,000 Miles On A Honda CRV and Still Going Strong

A few years back, Honda made a big deal out of Million Mile Joe, who put over 1 million miles on his Accord. I think it was 20 years old, and he put on over 50,000 miles a year as an insurance claims adjuster. The one thing that made his mileage legit was that he kept all records, including a logbook, of all of his maintenance and repairs. They gave him a new Accord after a ceremony in his hometown. I only say "legit" because on the old mechanical speedometers, it is nothing to go in and change the mileage by rotating the cylinders.

My '97 made it to almost 290k miles but I "retired" it due to numerous problems, and rust. The worst of it is the transmission--there is something wrong with the parking pawl getting stuck in park, so I have to leave it parked in neutral (with the brake on, as always). Paying to get it repaired would cost way more than the '97 is worth, so I'm looking to replace the leaky oil pan (it's rusted through) and just sell it off as a mechanic's special, or just drive it to the junkyard (after taking off the nearly new tires).

Yeah, rust is probably the worst part of what happened with the '97--it is at the point where fixing many of the parts is impossible due to bolts being rusted on. It's more a matter of when, not if, bolts snap off when trying to remove them. (It doesn't take much.) Doing the front ball joints was a draining exercise since it required a bit of muscle to get the bolts out.

I'll probably have my '09 for only another year or two--I'm finding too many things going wrong in both of ours that I'm not convinced they are reliable long-term. If it was random things, sure but I'm having the same major replacements on both of them within months of each other, and mileage is within 4k-5k between them. (They were built only weeks apart.) I'm at the point now where I just buy two of everything--if it fails on one CR-V, it soon fails on the other.

My '97 still has the original AC that still works, original starter, pretty much original everything except for the wear/dry-rotted items. Yet the '09s drive world better and are safer than the '97.

I'm moving on to an Acura RDX (2nd generation, not the 3rd with the turbo), or an MDX or Pilot. Mainly, I want the V6.