Longtime Honda driver Joe LoCicero of Norway, Maine, has logged a million miles in his 1990 Honda Accord. To mark the occasion, the car maker, which had been in contact with LoCicero and tracking his progress for some time, even set up a surprise parade for him.
Of course there are other drivers who have gone that far in cars from other companies. Car makers like Volvo and Mercedes-Benz have occasionally used such feats in their marketing campaigns for years. Still, a million miles is an extraordinary distance in a car.
For Honda, LoCicero’s mileage accumulation has provided a way to promote its vehicle’s reliability during a difficult year in which production was hobbled in the aftermath of the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan. As LoCicero approached a million miles, people were able to follow him at www.millionmilejoe.com.
The Accord has a decades-long reputation for durability and has been on the well-known 10-best-cars list that Car and Driver magazine puts out every year. But LoCicero, who drives and average of 62,500 miles a year, looks after his car a bit more painstakingly than the typical owner. He began keeping detailed mileage and maintenance records at 300,000 miles and has taken more than 661 photos of his odometer.