100,868 miles

Since purchasing my 1996 Subaru Legacy back in January 2000, I’ve managed to put that many miles on the car.

When I bought the Subaru right before the 2000 Super Bowl, it had 58,776 miles on it, having been owned by a former Subaru salesman who used it as his family car for some time. It had some nice extras, including the deluxe sound system with tweeters in the front doors. The color was nothing exciting – a metallic brown – and the engine was the smaller of the two offered in the Lecacy line (a 2.2 liter 4-cylinder boxer engine, versus the 2.5 available in the higher-end models), but it drove nicely during testing and I was sold.

My previous car, a 1989 Dodge Raider (i.e. Mitsubishi Montero), had 123,000 miles on it when I traded it in for the Subaru – all but 400 of those miles had been amassed by me during my 10-year relationship with the old off-road vehicle.

The Sube and I have been through a lot together: trips up and down the eastern seaboard, trips to New England to ski, commuting to work in CT, moving our apartment to DC. It’s showing signs of wear – new dents and scratches are part of city living, and a shield around the transmission rattles a bit – but it’s still going strong. It’s seen the price of petrol inflate from around $1.11 a gallon to rates that now approach $3.00 a gallon. It’s been through three sets of tires (including the ones I bought it with, which were the factory originals), a headlight, a front-left quarter panel and bumper, a set of brake pads and a few engine sensors which caused fits with the DC DMV.

But it’s been a great ride, and should be for many years to come. Over 159,000 miles covered – that’s a tad more than 6 trips around the world.

I wonder what the next 100,000 miles have in store….