If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that mileage doesn’t matter, condition does. However, a very high mileage certainly does indicate that a vehicle will last, and the owner deserves a medal for due care and attention.
Last week, I went through the results of Lease Loco’s Freedom of Information request to find the most common models with more than 750,000 miles. That went down well, so here are some more.
If we’re going to cover the resilient Vauxhall Zafira (20 examples have managed the big mileage), why not find a quick one with a possible expiry date in the shape of a VXR? This is a purposeful-looking people carrier, and there aren’t that many about, most of them sold by private owners. For £5995, you and six others can get into a 58,000-mile, three-owner VXR in blue from 2007. Otherwise, examples of the older, cleaner-styled Turbo can be found cheaper and with marginal mileages for us to build on. I saw a 2005 Turbo GSi with 66,000 miles for £3800.
As mentioned last week, you can always rely on a Volkswagen Golf to rack up the miles. They’re so well suited to diesel power, so I bet most of the 19 750,000-mile club members are 1.9 TDIs. In that case, let’s get ourselves a 2008 130,000-mile Bluemotion Tech Final Edition. You will pay £2250 for this one-owner example, which seems like excellent value to me, and London ULEZ exclusion is a factor here.
Rather impressively, the Golf coupé, better known as the Audi TT, has 16 examples with 750,000 or more on their digital odometers. There are some wonderfully cheap examples around; I was rather taken by a 2003 Quattro with 168,000 miles and 14 previous owners, all for £1500. It was a dealer car, presumably a part-exchange, so it has to be roadworthy and fairly sorted.
Lease Loco’s request also covered vehicles with 250,000 miles-plus. Sweeping aside a seven-nation army of vans, there are strong showings here from the Toyota Prius (3817), Volkswagen Passat (2456), Skoda Octavia (2109), Mercedes-Benz E-Class (1805) and Ford Mondeo (1402).
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Maybe these cars simply have unreliable distance recorders. I would not be surprised if digital odometers sometimes have the odd hiccup and add on the occasional spurious digit!