The Man For Whom They Made The Three Million Mile Badge

Most marriages don't last nearly as long as Irven Gordon's Volvo P1800 has lasted. And most couples probably don't spend as much time together as Irv has spent in his beloved car.

Irv says he hadn't even heard of Volvos until a few days before he bought the car, on June 30, 1966. At the time, he was fed up with his turbocharged 1963 Corvair Spyder, which he says was constantly making him late for his middle school science teaching job by breaking down en route. While thumbing through a Car and Driver with a car savvy friend, he stumbled upon an ad for the local Volvo dealership, with a photo of a P1800. "These are great cars," the friend told him. So down he went to Volvoville in Huntington, NY, and took a P1800 convertible for a spin. He drove for three hours, and then bought the much less expensive coupe, for $4,150, or $30,000 in current dollars, approximately his then annual salary.

That first weekend, Irv rolled 1,500 miles, returning to the dealership on Monday for his car's first checkup. He hadn't planned to drive through the weekend, but he says he was having too much fun to stop—up to Boston, down to Philly, and all over in between before returning to his home on Long Island. He's been driving the P1800 enthusiastically ever since. On September 24th of last year, he hit 3 million miles.


Irv has averaged 63,000 miles annually—172/day—although that number has ranged from 50k during his teaching years to north of 100k post his 1996 retirement. Assuming an average speed of 45 miles an hour over the years, that's nearly 4 hours a day. (Irv scoffed at the notion of making such an estimate absent records of speeds traveled over time [see "meticulous," below]. But for someone who has logged 3 million predominantly recreational miles, frequently crisscrossing the country, but who spent 30 years commuting 125 miles a day on the sclerotic Long Island Expressway—for a total of around 675,000 miles—45 mph seems reasonable to me.)

It takes an exceptionally well-built car to reach 3 million miles. When he opened up Irv's engine for its second rebuild, "It was in very good shape," says Duane Matejka, of R Sport Engineering in Pipersville, Pennsylvania. "The valves showed some wear, and the valve seats—that's expected." Matejka marvels that the valve springs hadn't broken after a billion (1,000,000,000) compression cycles. On the bearings, the outer layer of lead had worn down, revealing the underlying copper. Until lead became an official hazmat, the best bearings contained an outer layer of this soft metal, which could absorb any particulates from the oil, preventing them from scoring the bearing surfaces, says Matejka.

In fact, the engine's major problem 2 million miles after its first rebuild (which his dealer had thought unnecessary, but that Irv had insisted upon because he couldn't imagine an engine not needing a rebuild at 687K), was a couple of busted piston rings. Matejka says those probably were responsible for the P1800's lackluster ascent of the Sierras, the symptom that motivated the second rebuild.

The car "is greatly over-designed," says Matejka, who has a mechanical engineering degree, and who raced a P1800 for many years. The four cylinder "has more bearing area than a Chevy V8." Matejka says most cars require aftermarket connecting rods to race, but his P1800's stock rods did the job. These and the crankshaft are forged, which makes them stronger than the more usual casting. Matejka also notes that "the Swedes are anal about their metallurgy."

The rest of the car is as well-built as the engine. Aside from the first rebuild, the P1800 had only maintenance-related repairs until after it had reached 750k, when the transmission developed an oil leak, says Irv. (Vic Dres, of Goleta, CA, reports that his million mile, '88 Volvo 740 GLE had no non-maintenance problems until the transmission went kaput after he'd logged half a million miles, and Selden Cooper says his million mile, '87 240 sedan is still "very reliable." Neither engine has been rebuilt.)

Nonetheless, there's more to reaching three million miles than quality. The engine, Matejka says, "was very clean, because [Gordon] is so meticulous," an adjective others have applied to Irv's maintenance habits. (In fact, a former student of Gordon's, Richard Brunswick, MD, who I met at Arlington Mass's Barismo coffeehouse after he overheard me talking about Irv's Volvo, praised his teaching in similar terms.)

For example, you'd think a '66 Volvo, sans garage on Long Island, half a block from the Atlantic, would have rusted out already. My friend, Patty's 1968 145, originally a California car, which her parents had bought new when she was 10, had sprouted nascent rot by the time she and her husband donated the car to NPR around 2008, after 18 years in the snow belt. When I had wondered why Irv's was still pristine, he said he hosed the undercarriage during the winter. "I try to get all the crevices, where the salt and sand will build up," he says. "You just have to get down on your hands and knees."

Finally, Irv goes easy on the car. Early on, he took part in road rallies, but "after a while, I said, why am I killing my car?" Irv says he accelerates gently, and that his top speed is 60-65 mph. "I like to see how long I can make things last," he says.

Irv's love for road trips probably dates from the summer of '47, when he was 8, and "my family bought a new Buick and spent the entire summer traveling around the US." Subsequently, whenever his hard-working father had a weekend day off, "we spent the entire day in the car going somewhere." Irv waxes eloquent about the joy of visiting new places on road trips.

But Irv has driven himself into an uncomfortable paradox. The miles have transformed the P1800 from a fungible commodity into a piece of history—enshrined in the Guinness Book of World Records. That historical status makes the P1800 an asset for Volvo, and for Irv, as well. Since the first million milestone, Irv has been doing ads and events for Volvo, an avocation which he loves, but one for which he swears he receives only expenses (true, says Jessica Snell of the PR firm, Haberman, lately contracted to Volvo). Nonetheless, over the years, Volvo has given Irv two new Volvos—one at the turn of each million miles—with a third on the way.

Volvo's sense of value added was obvious from the shipping of Irv and the P1800 to Alaska for the 3 millionth mile, rather than allowing the event to take place in more mundane environs. Shipping the car was necessary, because by the time Volvo decided to shoot the event in Alaska, "I only had 200 miles to go to reach 3 million," Irv explains.

All that value has begun to weigh. The odds of a car's being totaled—a fate Texan Norbert Lissy's P1800 suffered around 700,000 miles—rise with exposure. In all his driving, Irv says he has never caused a crash, but that the metal has been bent maybe 11 times. A year ago, Irv was headed for Baltimore on a relatively empty I-95, he says, "when a guy in pickup truck ran into my car when I was doing 65. And I was on my way to do film shoot for Google! Ever since then I'm getting to be paranoid."

And so, nowadays, his other Volvo—the 2002 C70 that he received for the 2 million milestone, is getting more use. "I'm as careful as I can be about where and when I [drive the P1800]," says Irv. Asked if he'd ever sell the P1800, he says, "I just got invited to go to the Brussels auto show. Once I get rid of the car nobody is going to call anymore."

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Up And Out Of A Hopeless Situation

1991 GMC Jimmy SLE

Sometime in the middle of the night, while I was hard at work moving pallets, opening boxes and arranging Christmas merchandise on the sales floor of the giant wholesale buyers' club, the clouds moved in and it began to rain. The earth was cold and as soon as the first drop hit the ground it turned to ice. More drops followed, untold millions upon millions of them, and, in the matter of minutes, everything they struck was encapsulated in a growing coat of ice.

By the time the sun rose the storm had moved off towards the Cascades, where the increasing elevation forced the clouds higher into the sky and turned the rain to snow, but in the valley the damage had been done. People awoke to a crystalline world in which everyday objects had been transformed into works of art and where every branch was hung with rows of dagger like icicles.

I paid little attention to nature's wonderful trick as I emerged from the store and shielded my eyes from the light of the morning sun. I was a night dweller, one of the nameless rabble who worked through the dark hours in order to fill the shelves with merchandise that the good, normal people of the world would happily purchase amidst warmth and light while I slept. I hated my job, I hated my life and I hated anyone who had the those things that I, too, had worked so hard to attain only to find them denied in what should have been my hour of triumph.

College hadn't been in the cards for me when I had left high school more than a decade earlier, but a chance encounter with Japanese cartoons in the darkened exhibition hall of a Sci-Fi convention had shown me that there were more things in the world than the Snohomish district had managed to impart in 12 long years of education. I was amazed by the images I saw and I promptly sat down and remained in the room until the convention ended two full days later. Those cartoons led me to a lifelong study of the Japanese language, the Merchant Marines and eventually back to college at the ripe old age of 28 years old. For five years I chipped away my education, just over two years of which I spent in Junior College while I worked full time in the warehouse of a local hospital, and then another two during which I got my first taste of grinding poverty as I tried to live on student loans as I finished up my Bachelor's degree at a four year school on the far side of the state. When it was done I was 33 years old, a new college graduate with a degree that included the words "Cum Laude" above my name, and ready to step into that better, brighter future that I had worked so hard to attain.

But the world doesn't want 33 year old entry level white-collar workers. And it doesn't want 33 year old college graduate truck drivers, either. I was unemployed and my resumes generated little interest. Without even the meager subsistence afforded by student loans to sustain me, I was forced to returned to my mother's home where I resumed the residence in the bedroom of my childhood bedroom and where I soon found a pistol in my hand. Every day I pulled the .45 Caliber Springfield Automatic from its cushioned bag, removed the trigger lock and turned it over in my hands while I decided whether or not to use it on myself. Every day, after examining its lines and feeling its weight, I told myself I wasn't a quitter and returned it to its place. Eventually, as the early Summer turned to Autumn and Autumn gave way to Winter I was able to score a job as a seasonal temp worker for a Seattle area warehouse chain.

To this day I have mixed feelings when I walk into a warehouse store. I walk along the rows of pallets and note their perfectly aligned edges. I see how human hands have worked to pull product up from the backs of the pallets and form the boxes into rows along the aisle to give the impression that the store is stuffed to the gills with merchandise. I keep my cart in the middle of the lane to avoid accidental contact with the carefully positioned goods and anything I chance to pick up but not buy is returned to its prior position perfectly faced with the other packages, right-side-up and label out. I know the effort that has gone into the presentation, that some worker has touched and carefully positioned everything that strikes my eye. And I know that if any part of it was less than perfect, some 21 year-old dickhead shift-manager would have berated the poor slob who chanced to leave it that way while still exhorting him to work faster.

The truth was I couldn't give a shit if the world was encased in ice or fire at that point. My shift was over and I was exhausted. My bedroom, such as it was, lay back up in the hills some 20 miles away and I had an appointment with the pistol I kept under the bed there before going to sleep. My big GMC Jimmy had crossed the mountain passes in the dead of winter more times than I could count so a trip across the valley and then up a few hills was an easy morning's work. I locked in the hubs, flipped the lever to 4 Wheel High and rolled smoothly out of the parking lot while other the other workers fishtailed their pitiful econoboxes around in circles next to their parking places.

The interstate was jammed and I eased my truck into line with everyone else unfortunate to be going somewhere that morning. We headed North at a snail's pace to the scene of a massive pile-up. I looked in awe at the twisted wreckage, one of the cars on its side, still smoldering despite the steady stream of water the firetruck on-scene poured upon the hulk. Later, I learned the accident was fatal. Likely some other poor work-a-day schlub like myself trying to get to or from the place that barely paid for his daily bread. God rest his soul.

Where Interstate 5 North met Highway 2 I slipped off the three lane freeway and onto the two lane bridge known as "the trestle" that first spans the Snohomish river and then crosses the width of the flood-prone valley elevated upon row after row of concrete columns. This road, too, was crammed with cars moving at a slow walk and the normally quick trip took an interminable amount of time. But as the end of the bridge gradually approached, I noticed one place where the cars dared not go.

Photo courtesy of WA State DOT

At the end of the trestle, Highway 2 takes a sharp right turn and heads South along the edge of the Snohomish valley before eventually resuming its Easterly heading up over Stevens Pass. At the same point, an exit branches off towards the North headed towards the town of Lake Stevens via another local highway. There is, however, a third option. A branch exit onto a road that leads dead east, right up and over the rim of the valley.

The road is one of those pieces of pavement that would never be built today. More than 300 feet tall, Cavalero Hill rises up like a sheer escarpment above the floor of the Snohomish Valley. From its top, a trip down the hill is like a ride over a waterfall. As you approach the edge of the precipice, the landscape on either side falls away and the horizon fills your vision. Ahead, the City of Everett rises up on what seems to be a small knoll and beyond it lies Possession Sound, Whidbey Island and the Olympic Peninsula. For a moment it seems as though you will fly off into space, but then the road dips and your perspective skews into a headlong dive towards the valley below. In the old days, that road went all the way to the floor of the valley and then up and onto a rickety two lane trestle where cars sped towards one another inches apart with no margin for error, but in the early '70s some thoughtful civil engineer designed an on-ramp that reaches up fully a third of the hill's towering height and slingshots you down onto a Westbound bridge that whisks you safely across the valley.

Headed East, the way I was going that icy morning, an improved off ramp similarly reaches up onto the slope but once you begin the ascent of the hill itself it engines strain to make the climb and drivers find themselves pushed back against their seat cushions while their vehicle struggles upward like an airplane fighting against a stall. Now that road stood as empty and icy as the Matterhorn

From my position on the floor of the valley, the situation seemed hopeless. Everywhere I looked was a line of cars. To the South an endless, slow moving procession headed towards my home and to the North a similar line headed more-or-less away from my house. But ahead the hill was open, and inside of me something simply snapped. I pointed the Jimmy's hood ornament at the slope and mashed the gas.

I saw them looking. Mortal men and women trapped in their tiny cars as my massive GMC thundered by and accelerated towards the slope. People gaped, mouths fully open in shock and one man had the audacity to lay in his horn in a hopeless attempt to dissuade me from my chosen course of action. But no fucks were given that day my friends and I hit the hill at fully 50 miles per hour.

The earth tilted upwards and the sky filled my vision. The weight of my body shifted onto my back, like an astronaut preparing to launch into space, and the GMC began to claw its way up the hillside. The tires skittered on the icy pavement and the truck slipped to the side but I corrected the steering and stayed hard on the gas. One tire found traction and then the next and with increasing confidence and speed I rose up and out of the valley on a plume of snow and ice, ascending to the edge of the precipice and onto the flat ground beyond while those below could only watch in amazement. I could not – would not – be stopped.

Maybe it's crazy but something inside of me changed right then and that morning and before I went to sleep I made a conscious decision to leave the .45 where it belonged under the bed. The next day I did the same and, although my life didn't get better right away, I never again picked that pistol up with the thought of turning it against myself. The world sucked, I knew, and the roads that I thought should have been opened to me after years of hard work and sacrifice had been jammed by the narrow minded bastards who had achieved their stations in life before I had thought to go there, but there was still a way ahead. I could stay trapped behind them forever or I could climb the hill and go farther than they ever dreamed. There was only one real way to go.

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

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Production-Ready Subaru Legacy To Make 2014 Chicago Auto Show Debut

After its worldwide debut as a concept at the 2013 Los Angeles Auto Show last November, the Subaru Legacy is ready to show-off its production-ready ensemble at next week's 2014 Chicago Auto Show.

Though the teaser doesn't offer much — as teasers are wont to do — it does offer glimpses of the sedan's thin A-pillar, raked windscreen, and the matching LED lights up front and down back, all part of Subaru's new design language. Judging by the lightly flared fenders, however, no 21-inch wheels — like those on the concept in LA — will be offered when the Legacy arrives in showrooms this year.

The production Legacy will debut February 6 at the Chicago Auto Show.

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Audi Invests In Synthetic Gasoline From Sugar

Audi's bio-fuel initiative is expanding into France through an investment by the automaker to Global Bioenergies, whose bio-isooctane could be the replacement for petroleum gasoline when the time comes to make the switch.

The bio-fuel is made from fermented sugar through genetic modification of E. coli bacteria to produce isobutane gas without poisoning the yeast utilized in the fermentation, an issue currently experienced in ethanol production. The longer-lasting process works with feedstocks like corn and sugarcane as well as straight sugar, and can also be adapted to use biomass such as high-glucose wood chips.

At the pump, bio-isooctane can go directly into a vehicle without modification to the engine and fuel-delivery system, or can be blended with petrogasoline in the same manner as E15 and E85. The biogasoline may also come with a lower price per gallon or litres, as the fuel can be produced much quicker and cheaper than ethanol and other bio-fuels.

For the moment, Global Bioenergies is building two working proof-of-concept production plants in Germany and France, whose total annual output is expected to be 100,000 litres. Audi's investment will be used to help in the rollout of the new fuel as part of the automaker's branded e-fuel strategy, with bio-isooctane completing the triad with Audi's investments in ethanol and biodiesel for their complete lineup of vehicles.

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