Famous Lexus LS400 Finally Hits the Million-Mile Mark
Two decades after leaving the showroom, odometer of Matt Farah’s 1996 ‘Million-Mile Lexus’ now forever stuck on 999,999 miles.
It’s always an amazing feat whenever a given vehicle goes above and beyond its normal operating parameters. Some do it through a massive injection of horsepower. Others by enduring the toughest conditions known to humanity.
And sometimes, it’s simply by racking up the miles. Jalopnik says the 1996 Lexus LS400, owned by Matt Farah and dubbed the ‘Million-Mile Lexus,’ crossed the million-mile mark in late February 2019.
“And on the twentieth day, of the second month, of the fourth year, the #millionmilelexus officially clocked a million miles,” wrote Farah on his Instagram February 20. He bought the Lexus in 2014 for $1,500, which had 897,000 miles clocked on its digital odometer. With the help of several drivers over the years since, Farah brought the 23-year-old to the finish line in Florida, the same odometer now permanently frozen at 999,999 miles.
“Driving a car from showroom new to 1 million miles in a (relatively) short period of time is a feat of driving,” wrote Farah in response to a comment about how he only drove the last 100,000 miles in the Lexus. “Starting with a car that has had 5 owners and 900k miles already on it is a different challenge entirely.”
The first challenge, though, was getting the Lexus back in shape to log the last 100,000 miles. Farah says the car was in “a massive state of disrepair” when he bought it, leading him to invest $17,000 into getting it back in shape, plus a $4,500/year commercial insurance policy to cover every driver who could contribute to the million-mile challenge.
“I don’t need the kudos, but in this case, you should absolutely celebrate the car,” Farah says in the same reply, “because doing what it has done is way more impressive, mechanically speaking, than one person driving one car to a million. That’s the story here. Not that one guy put 100k miles on an old car.”
Farah adds in another reply that the Lexus will go to Freddy Tavarish, with the intent of beating a Hellcat on the dyno with a single turbo. Once the engine explodes, Farah will make a coffee table out of the blown block, and says there will be no replacement for the iconic ‘Million-Mile Lexus.’
