What a neat thread - great to see so many folks looking after their vehicles.
I've never owned a new vehicle until I sold my work van and bought an Isuzu truck. I got great coin for the van, we'd saved up enough, and it made sense to buy new with the truck due to the massive amount of customising on the body. Did it all myself (with a little bit of help from my friends, as the saying goes) - barely run in at 30,000km so far, and a lovely workhorse.
The van had 600,000km on it when I sold her, with the original engine still purring. Kinda cheating as it's a semi-commercial vehicle, but still unheard-of for this model. I maintained it myself - thoroughly and meticulously - and it served me excellently in return, saving my life on several occasions.
Over here 200,000kms is considered the magic number to avoid, but there are higher arbitrary 'thresholds' for bigger commercial vehicles, some of which 'go round the clock' several times, i.e. several million kms.
The key is that engines and mechanical things work best in constant operation with good preventative maintenance schedules in place. Some of the big rigs literally never turn off until service time - weeks at a time 24/7 with rotating shifts for the drivers hauling freight, doing tens of thousands of kms.
Look after your gear and it'll look after you.
