What Does Half a Million Miles Actually do to a Car? (Engine Teardown)

There are a lot of ways that we grade our vehicles. Perhaps one of the most common among them would be their durability. After all, durability is one of the most common concerns when buying a car. With the vast majority of cases, these cars and trucks are going to be depended upon every day. Not having to think about maintenance would be an ideal situation.

I think that most people who purchase an automobile would be happy if it made it up to 500,000 miles. In fact, no matter what the brand, the life expectancy of most rides probably isn’t going to be that high. Every once in a while, though, we find the rare bird that will be able to make it to such a milestone and sometimes even further. These are the types of builds that manufacturers strive to replicate.

This time, we follow along with a feature from Car Throttle that observes the phenomenon of the half-million-mile car. In this particular case, the suspect just so happens to be a Volkswagen with 540,000 miles on the clock. While the car has managed to rack up quite a substantial lifespan without fail, we suspect some of the components are probably looking a little bit less than brand-new. It’s really to be expected as lots of moving components have butted heads over that 540k.

By following along with the video below, we watch quite a fascinating process. Instead of just keeping this thing together and hoping for the best, we find a teardown video. The process observes what so much mileage can do to different components. Most probably wouldn’t want to press their luck with a disassembly. However, we’re glad that curiosity got the best of these mechanics who had a thirst to know more about the high mileage VW.