Spent a few days in Vancouver BC on my way to Alaska. Got a taxi from the airport to downtown. Toyota Prius C. Just turned over 1 million kilometers on the original powertrain. Car looked and ran quite well. Guy slices through traffic like Earnhardt at Talladega. Between him and his brother and cousin they're running about 14 hours a day 7 days a week. Asked him about maintenance and he said he changes oil every 10,000 km and uses whatever is on sale at Canadian Tire.
Prius taxi guy, 1 million km
- Thread starter nascarnation
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Seems par for the course with the Priuses. For real that's impressive.
But, and bear with me here, imagine seeing that odometer on a H/K 2.4L? I know I'd just about crap myself
But, and bear with me here, imagine seeing that odometer on a H/K 2.4L? I know I'd just about crap myself
Triple_Se7en
$50 Site Donor 2024
Does Canadian Tire sell any house brand(s) oils?
Patman
Staff member
Yes, they have a line called Motomaster (and Motomaster OE Plus) and they are sourced from Shell.
Triple_Se7en
$50 Site Donor 2024
We have a bunch of fine Canadian Members here at BITOG and that's a housebrand oil that gets very little mention here.
A more major name-brand from Canada that gets little mention here too..... is Petro Canada.
A more major name-brand from Canada that gets little mention here too..... is Petro Canada.
I’ve never seen Petro Canada oil for sale at retail except for the gas stations and they usually have a very minimal and expensive selection.
I could be wrong but I think one would have to buy from a distributor.
Patman
Staff member
I have also never seen their oil anywhere except in their gas stations. I feel like most people only buy their oil as a top up in case of emergency and not many would be buying more than just one liter at the station. I wonder if they might be selling their oils to independent repair shops at a much lower cost via distributors? I haven’t noticed lately but I do recall a time when a few Petro Canada stations in Mississauga had repair shops attached to them, perhaps they were using PC oils.
Someone here posted a high mileage cluster from a Sonata, IIRC.
Excellent question. I would have liked to query him in more detail but he wasn't a real outgoing personality and was playing some Eastern European music on the radio (I think he was from Bulgaria) and it wasn't easy to converse.
Oh that explains it, the guy was from some Eastern country! I lived in France for a year and jockeyed around in enough cabs and talk to many of the foreigners even in France! If you can imagine that. And they just drive their cars they pour oil into them when they need it, and gas. I've even known a few easterners here in the USA that do the same thing they give two squats about motor oil and or maintenance. These are the people that drive there tires to the steel belt. No offense to any one out here but it's almost like if you put the worry out there something comes to you. And if you could care less it just keeps running or blows up!
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Very impressive! I assume he's using whatever oil filter is cheap at Canadian Tire too, which would be Fram EG. Too bad he didn't say he was using Toyota filters - that'd be nice proof that filter efficiency doesn't matter as much as we think
It's fun to talk to cabbies about their cars. A lot of them here did LNG conversions but now they favor hybrids instead (apparently they receive some subsidy from the government for hybrids). I asked one about tires and he said they use the cheapest tires available!
It's also weird seeing crappy EVs as taxis, such as the BZ4X - maybe the limited range is enough for a shift? Curious how the charging downtime affects them.
It's fun to talk to cabbies about their cars. A lot of them here did LNG conversions but now they favor hybrids instead (apparently they receive some subsidy from the government for hybrids). I asked one about tires and he said they use the cheapest tires available!
It's also weird seeing crappy EVs as taxis, such as the BZ4X - maybe the limited range is enough for a shift? Curious how the charging downtime affects them.
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I trust you lectured him on the virtues of finding a suitable oil with appropriate NOACK and HTHS or his car won't survive another million kilometers.
Geez….its only 620,000 miles….whys everyone so excited?
I’ve ridden in a few Prius Taxis in Winnipeg and had my mind opened up on them being great cars. The driver experience is a whole different story. One time I felt I should alert the authorities based on a conversation.
The comment about worrying too much about our cars is very true. I’m not changing though.
I’ve ridden in a few Prius Taxis in Winnipeg and had my mind opened up on them being great cars. The driver experience is a whole different story. One time I felt I should alert the authorities based on a conversation.
The comment about worrying too much about our cars is very true. I’m not changing though.
Patman
Staff member
And how many people do you know who have put that many miles on a car?
Washington Dulles used to have a monopoly cab company, Washington Flyer I believe. They all had Crown Vics that were driver owned. They took good care of them because I used to see them at oil change places all the time. I always asked them how many miles. They would run them to 400k and then sell them to South America countries. Many of them had more than one tranny but all were on original engines.
Maybe the details are a little different. What is assuredly true is that Crown Vics, even in taxi duty, go long, long miles. What is unclear is how you make a car disappear at 400,000 miles as a company practice, when the cars are "driver-owned." While a 400k Crown Vic might still be usable, it just does not have that much resale, so I am not sure how it makes sense economically to ship them to South America. Now, South America is more than one country, but I don't know how many Crown Vics there are in these places where the cost of fuel is high. I don't mean to call BS, but the fact of the matter is that well-used, high mileage taxis go to the junkyard, where they probably belong.
Did you catch which model year?
That's what they told me. Maybe the only place they have ANY value is down there. They never looked worn out...just a lot of miles.
Interesting thread! Thanks, @nascarnation, for starting it.
There was a newspaper filler story in the autumn of 1974, when I was a car-crazy teen who read about cars avidly, but had no idea how to do even the most basic mechanical work. (I'm sure about the approximate date because my parents had just moved us to a different province, and I remember reading the story in a newspaper in the library of my new school.)
Anyway, the story was about a taxi driver in NY who had just rolled his '59 Caddy over the million-mile mark.
He said he changed oil weekly. Averaging a bit over 60,000 miles annually, that means he was changing oil about every 1200 miles.
There was a newspaper filler story in the autumn of 1974, when I was a car-crazy teen who read about cars avidly, but had no idea how to do even the most basic mechanical work. (I'm sure about the approximate date because my parents had just moved us to a different province, and I remember reading the story in a newspaper in the library of my new school.)
Anyway, the story was about a taxi driver in NY who had just rolled his '59 Caddy over the million-mile mark.
He said he changed oil weekly. Averaging a bit over 60,000 miles annually, that means he was changing oil about every 1200 miles.
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