Kenneth Lindland, a retired preacher from Grass Lake, Michigan, didn't really know what he was getting into when he purchased his used 1985 Pontiac Parisienne from his wife Agnes' brother in 1989. At that time, the car had just over 57,000 miles on it, and Lindland said he would be happy if the car simply held together until 137,000 miles.

He got all of that, and a lot more. "The last thing on our minds when we obtained this car from Agnes' brother was that we would drive it an unusual number of miles," Lindland said. "I figured if we drove it to 137,860 miles that we would have our money’s worth out of a totally depreciated car." Lindland soon had to recalculate his depreciation figures to 150,000 miles, and then to 200,000 miles. He would be recalculating those figures for quite sometime, because the car was just too good to part with. "Because I had such short-term mileage expectancies for the car," Lindland said, we didn't over-protect it. We used it for jobs like hauling firewood and gravel at our cottage. This car vastly outperformed all of our expectancies."

Because the car kept running dependably past all of his benchmarks after becoming fully depreciated, Lindland realized that the car was actually making him money at the depreciation figure of 10 cents per mile. By the time it had accumulated over 330,000 miles, Lindland decided it had saved him the nearly $20,000 he would have spent on acquiring a new car. So when it came time for the Lindlands to purchase a motor home, those savings were instrumental in the decision to make the purchase. "This Pontiac actually bought our motor home for us debt free," Lindland said.

Lindland credits the car's long service life to using AMSOIL synthetic motor oil in the engine since the day he bought it. "I'm very grateful for the longevity which I believe AMSOIL gave to our vehicle," Lindland said. "We've kept it up, but as far as I'm concerned, the secret is lubrication."

Lindland also credits AMSOIL synthetic motor oil with savings associated with the costs of motor oil and motor oil disposal. "We have changed the oil only 11 times (every 25,000 miles) while we owned the car," Lindland said. "If we used conventional oils changed at conventional 3,000 mile intervals it would have required more than 400 quarts to last this long. We have used only 55 quarts for the oil changes and 13 extra quarts when changing filters. Just think how much oil this kept out of disposal units!"

Although the car has accumulated more than 340,000 miles, the engine and transmission are in remarkably good shape. In fact, it ran so well through the years that the head was never removed for any repairs. Lindland had a compression test done on the vehicle in December 2000, and could barely believe the results. The highest and lowest recorded cylinder pres-sures were only eight pounds apart.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. Although the car seemed to have many miles left to travel, Lindland's wife Agnes finally convinced him that it was time to purchase a newer car. "The longer he had the vehicle," she said "the harder it was to make him get rid of it." It was with great reluctance on Kenneth's part that the Lindlands purchased another car.

With appreciation they gave their Parisienne to AMSOIL INC. "I feel very indebted to AMSOIL," Lindland said. "No way would this car have given us this fine service with conventional oils." The Lindlands drove up the 700 miles from Grass Lake, Michigan, to Superior, Wisconsin, to deliver their Parisienne to Superior on June 26, 2001. The car is now being driven by an AMSOIL employee to see how many more miles can be added to the 340,000.