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Mine has 'only' 118,000 miles, but it is accumulating very few more as the new apple of my eye is now my '63 PV544.
Mine is also a '71 E in yellow/black, and I bought it in 1987 from an ad in Hemmings and flew from St. Louis MO to Norwalk, CT to buy it. It was in great shape when I bought it, a real garage queen with only 77,000 miles. The A/C worked great, the OD worked great, it ran like a top. The only thing that turned up on the drive back to St. Louis were some sticky rear calipers (which the previous owners very graciously refunded out of the sale price).
Unfortunately, my bad luck with 1800's continued. My previous one, a dark green/tan '72 E - somewhere between 200 and 300 thousand miles and still in great shape, had been totalled by a driver running a stop sign at full speed and hitting the right front tire. It was bent into a U shape and spun around about 4 times. But I was unhurt. Dazed and dizzy, but unscathed. After I had driven the new one only for about a year and a half someone ran into the rear of it while I was sitting at a stop light. Really bent the trunk section in and bent the frame over the rear axle. The insurance company totalled the car and gave me $5,500 (my purchase price) and I bought the car back from them for $900. I had the frame straightened and new sheet metal put in on the back, but the body shop didn't do a great job (the 1800 body is very hard to work on) and I wasn't very happy with the results. Its just a little off.
I was in college, and this was my only car. So I drove it even in the winter when they salt the roads in the midwest. I always washed it as carefully as possible, but after 4 or 5 years rust popped out simutaneously in several spots - most notably the sills, front fenders, and various sections of the subframe. I checked on the cost to have it repaired (yikes!) and in the light of the imperfect rear end on the car I shouldn't throw good money after bad. At this point buying a nice one would be cheaper than fixing this one.
So I keep it in driving condition (licensed, insured) but I don't drive it much. Its mostly waiting to become an organ donor for an interesting old Volvo, like a 122 coupe or a 445 wagon.
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