The Story of the Million-Mile Lexus LS 400

Posted by Kevin on September 25th, 2019

Road & Track has published an excellent article by Matt Farah, where he discusses his Internet-famous million-mile Lexus LS 400:

On December 1, 2014, I was sitting on a beach in Hawaii. It was my birthday, and my new girlfriend, Hanna Stein, and I were on our first vacation together. I got an email from my old friend Rob Ferretti with the subject line, “Who wants to take this to 1M?” A Craigslist link led me to a tired but reasonably straight-looking 1996 Lexus LS 400. The seller was asking $1400. The car had five previous owners who had put a collective 897,000 miles on the odometer.

The wheels turned in my head as I stared at the ad. The LS was newer than the one I had in high school, but it was fundamentally the same car as my dad’s. It was even the same color, with the optional, real gold-plated-badge package. It seemed so close to a million miles, as close as I’d ever find one like it for sale. And that car, I decided, deserved to make it all the way.

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Mr1956T

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My IS at 142,000 miles is but a baby! If it continues to run as it has for the past 90,000 miles it will be a case of who goes first, me or the car...
 
krew

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Matt Farah’s Lexus LS 400 Reaches 1,000,000 Miles

19-02-22-lexus-million-mile-ls.jpg


Odometer permanently stuck at 999,999.
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krew

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19-09-25-lexus-ls-million-miles-farah.jpg

Road & Track has published an excellent article by Matt Farah, where he discusses his Internet-famous million-mile Lexus LS 400:

On December 1, 2014, I was sitting on a beach in Hawaii. It was my birthday, and my new girlfriend, Hanna Stein, and I were on our first vacation together. I got an email from my old friend Rob Ferretti with the subject line, “Who wants to take this to 1M?” A Craigslist link led me to a tired but reasonably straight-looking 1996 Lexus LS 400. The seller was asking $1400. The car had five previous owners who had put a collective 897,000 miles on the odometer.
The wheels turned in my head as I stared at the ad. The LS was newer than the one I had in high school, but it was fundamentally the same car as my dad’s. It was even the same color, with the optional, real gold-plated-badge package. It seemed so close to a million miles, as close as I’d ever find one like...
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T

thtupid

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$17,000k in maintenance is not a small sum though...but then 1m miles is also no small feat. A question though, how many European cars (or any other car for that matter) with equivalent amounts of maintenance will be able to reach 1 million miles do you people think? ​
 
Ian Schmidt

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thtupid said:
$17,000k in maintenance is not a small sum though...but then 1m miles is also no small feat. A question though, how many European cars (or any other car for that matter) with equivalent amounts of maintenance will be able to reach 1 million miles do you people think?
Click to expand...

And that $17k didn't involve touching the 1UZ aside from normal wear items (although I imagine it could really use a full teardown and a new set of gaskets everywhere).

As for other cars, a decently maintained Chrysler slant-6 or fuel injection era 318 V8 should potentially be as solid as the 1UZ, it's the entire rest of the car you'd have to worry about 😁 Certain versions of the GM "3800" V6 are supposed to be really solid as well. For European cars I'd say a BMW 2002 - you still see those occasionally on the road in good condition, and it's still a good-looking car.
 
krew

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Ian Schmidt said:
And that $17k didn't involve touching the 1UZ aside from normal wear items (although I imagine it could really use a full teardown and a new set of gaskets everywhere).
Click to expand...

And Farah did say some of the repairs were a result of the driver as opposed to the car itself. Maybe a couple accidents?
 
Chops

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In contrast to Matt's million mile LS400, my oldest brother bought a brand new 1st gen Hyundai Sonata back in 1989. It was the 2.4L auto model. He put around 240k miles on it in around 7 years. In that amount of time, he went through 4 engines, 7 transmissions, countless alternators and starters, the a/c was dead for about 3/4 of that time, endless new pads and rotors, a bunch of replacement window regulators, etc, etc, etc. Even a new paint job!

Just goes to show where Korean and Japanese quality stood back then. Then again, that was also a $15k car compared to a $53k car. These days, they are just about neck and neck in quality though.
 
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