I've been searching car graveyards for interesting stories of automotive history for 15 years now, documenting 2,296 discarded vehicles along the way, and all that time I've kept my eyes open for impressively high odometer readings. For several years now, Mercedes-Benz has owned the top three spots on my personal Junkyard Odometer Championship standings, with Honda sitting at #4 with a 513,519-mile 1988 Accord. As of this week, however, this discovery in a Denver-area self-service yard has vaulted Honda to the top of the final-odometer-reading pyramid.
Yes, this battered 1988 Honda Accord LXi three-door hatchback traveled 626,476 miles during its time on the road. I got a tip about it from a reader who drives a tow truck in the Denver region and wasted no time getting to this car the very next day.
Mercedes-Benz set what seemed like an unreachable bar back in 2017, when I found a 1987 190E in a California yard with 601,173 miles (no, it wasn't a diesel). I've found a few vehicles showing higher readings (such as a 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit Cabriolet with a not-so trustworthy 930,013 miles showing on the odometer) but I didn't believe their jumbled-looking numbers.
Something to keep in mind here is that most car manufacturers didn't start installing six-digit odometers in US-market vehicles until the early 1980s (with the notable exception of Volvo and Mercedes-Benz), with some Detroit companies hanging onto the old five-digit units well into the 1990s. Then digital odometers became all the rage around the turn of the century, and those require the car's ECM to be powered up to show a display. This means that I'm nearly certain to have walked right by half-million-mile or even million-mile cars and trucks in junkyards without knowing it. And, yes, I do look in every Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor I find with thrashed cab livery, and the 800,000-mile examples I hear about never seem to exist in the junkyards I frequent.
So, disclaimers aside, let's take a look at the current Murilee Martin Junkyard Odometer Top Ten, now that today's Accord has taken the top slot:
- 1988 Honda Accord LXi, 626,476 miles
- 1987 Mercedes-Benz 190E, 601,173 miles
- 1981 Mercedes-Benz 300SD, 572,139 miles
- 1985 Mercedes-Benz 300SD, 525,971 miles
- 1988 Honda Accord DX, 513,519 miles
- 1990 Volvo 740 Turbo Wagon, 493,549 miles
- 1988 Toyota Tercel 4WD Wagon, 413,344 miles
- 2002 Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor, 412,013 miles
- 1983 Honda Accord, 411,794 miles
- 1985 Mercedes-Benz 300D, 411,448 miles
So, we've got four Mercedes-Benzes (three of which are diesels), three 1980s Honda Accords, and one apiece Ford, Toyota, and Volvo (I've found many, many discarded Toyotas and Volvos with better than 300,000 miles on the clock, of course).
As you'd expect, this car has the five-speed manual transmission. Note the manner in which the boot wore out after all those millions of shifts. I wonder how many clutch replacements this car saw.
I suspect that the clutch and brake pedals got at least one set of new rubber pads during their lives.
The 1988 Accord LXi got a fuel-injected 2.0-liter engine, rated at 120 horsepower, while the cheaper DX models got carburetors and 98 hp.
While this car looks much nicer than, say, a Nissan 200SX with half as many miles, it appears that the final owner took a few cosmetic shortcuts here and there. For example, when the driver's side outside door handle failed, a not-quite-matching white one was swapped in.
There's rust in the usual spots and its resale value would have been at scrap levels even without that, thanks to the terrifying odometer figure. Still, it's a shame this car wasn't given a shot to reach 750,000 miles.
I bought the instrument cluster, because some part of this car should survive, and it will live in a place of honor in my office.
