Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
That feat is doable with any car as long as you don't live in the rust belt and don't mind swapping out components when they catch the dead. The thing is that very few people are willing to drive one vehicle that long and put that much money into one.
That's true, assuming there is parts availability or the parts can be fabricated, but some cars make it much easier to do than others. Low volume cars are harder and often prohibitively expensive to do this with. A Civic or E-Series van will go as long as you want it to if it doesn't get rusty, and that is a form of reliability in itself. Just being able to fix it easily and get parts now. Ultimately, reliability is minimal amount of inconvenience for the miles driven. A 1990s Corvette has an engine that can absolutely do high miles, the electronics, not so much. The million mile E-Series is the example of examples for running on the unopened engine and trans, but it was getting good maintenance and had the ideal duty cycle to pull that off. It was driven more like a semi truck is than the average commuter car, and is a fairly simple vehicle with forever parts availability.
Even with a refresh of the original engine and trans, I would say OP's car qualifies as reliable. Those things were done to keep the car in tip top shape, not because it had a catastrophic failure. Even when the transmission was done, I bet the car still exceeded the average mileage of cars on the road, and 420K on the engine is totally acceptable. Is it totally original? No. Nothing with a ton of miles ever is. Is it reliable? Yes. Is it a testament to how good the car is? I would say so...when major components did need refreshing, it was worth doing, and was apparently not a major inconvenience. He hasn't been sticking a Jasper engine and trans in it every 100K.
We have a 2004 Silverado 1500 V8 at work that is fast approaching 400K on the original engine, no internal engine work at all. I think it may have had one transmission, but I can't remember for sure. No more than one replacement, so it's still averaging 200K per 4L60E at least which is pretty good. There is a blend door knocking like crazy somewhere in the dash though, among other feature issues. CEL has been on a long time, probably for various reasons that haven't been investigated. The last time I drove it, the oil level warning came on and the PS sounded like a dying whale. I added nearly a quart of PS fluid, 2 quarts of oil, and a half gallon of coolant. When the engine or trans goes out, it will be junked as it's just worn out overall...seats are mush, steering wheel is getting down to metal at the top, body is trashed, etc. We ran another one (but with a 4.3 V6) to 425K before the engine went boom...distributor gear came apart, and it went to the back lot and has been partially stripped of useful things. AL's lack of state inspections have been somewhat conducive to their long life at minimal cost, and there are a LOT of old vehicles in this state. Vehicles over 20 years old are a very common sight here.