Neal Rubin

557,000 miles on her Chariot

Sweet old Rachel Veitch of Orlando, Fla., could be the ruination of the automobile industry. But at least she's cute.

When GrowingBolder.com first interviewed her, she was 89 years old and had 540,000 miles on her 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente. Now she's 90, still packing a sharp tongue and a stubby pistol, and the odometer has clicked past 557,000.

Unlike her three husbands, Veitch says, the Mercury has "never lied to me, never cheated on me, and I can always depend on her."

Veitch is on her seventh Midas muffler, and thank you, gentlemen, for the lifetime warranty. She's had three sets of Sears shock absorbers, also through a lifetime warranty. And though the number seems high, she claims to have had 16 free batteries, courtesy of J.C. Penney and Firestone.

"She's demonstrating the perfect way to take care of a car," says Mike Hardie, director of global quality and productivity for Ford Motor Co., and that's what makes her a menace.

"If everyone did that," he says, "we'd never sell another one, so don't spread it around too far."

'Immensely repairable'

GrowingBolder.com devotes itself to "ordinary people doing extraordinary things." Generally, the people are old enough to be hollering at neighborhood kids to stay off the lawn.

Veitch is extraordinary for the most commonplace of reasons: She drives her car. And drives it, and drives it some more. In 2007, she drove it round-trip to Pennsylvania for her high school reunion, a 3,225-mile round trip.

She prefers to make that sort of excursion herself, so that she can meander where she sees fit. "If I see a road, I'll take off," she says. "I don't know where it goes and I don't even care. I just want to find out."

As noted in the original report, above, and two follow-ups you'll see here under "More Video," Veitch is the original and only driver of the yellow Mercury she calls Chariot. When it's in the shop, she's there, too, standing beneath the hoist with a lubrication diagram and a sharp eye.

"Quite honestly," Hardie says, "one of the things manufacturers like Ford don't want you to know is that you can always repair your vehicle. Cars are immensely repairable."

She wants another comet

The process is different now than when Veitch met Chariot. Most of those terms from the classic 30,000-mile tune-up are obsolete -- distributor cap, rotors, points. Spark plugs should be good for at least 100,000 miles, and you don't have to yank them out every few thousand miles to re-gap them and sandblast the ends.

Today's cars also have safety features a '64 Mercury doesn't, like ... Well, all of them. The Comet came with lap belts, which Veitch wears scrupulously, and that's just about it.

Chariot has run up its half-million miles on the original engine, which is good, because no one is making those anymore. Some parts would still be easy to find, Hardie says, like plugs. Others would take some searching, because there's no cottage industry out there crafting parts for a Comet Caliente the way there is for the early Mustangs or the Model T.

"If that Caliente badge goes -- if it gets corroded, or comes loose -- I was wondering if she could get another one," Hardie says.

Veitch hopes so, because she's not buying anything else. "Build me a '64 Comet exactly like I have," she says, "and then I'll trade."

Hardie says she'd probably be amazed by the smooth handling and quiet ride of, say, a 2010 Ford Fusion. He also says that in the past few years, Ford has reduced its warranty repair rate by more than 50 percent.

He did not, however, suggest that a new Fusion could last 557,000 miles. Nope. That's treason and sedition, and you're not going to hear it from him.

nrubin@detnews.com (313) 222-1874