How long have you owned a car ???

In the Olympics of car ownership, Rachel Veitch of Orlando, Fla., is a marathoner of the first order, with a record virtually impossible to match.

For one thing, Veitch is still driving at the age of 91. For another, she has had her 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente for 45 years, racking up about 559,000 miles on it. Together, Veitch and her car have outlasted her three husbands -- a feat surely worth of a footnote in the annals of automotive history.

Her first husband picked out the Comet, agreeing to pay $3,289 for it, no small sum at the time. She got to keep it after their divorce in the early 1970s, "He took the new ‘72 Pontiac and I kept my 'chariot'" – her pet name for the 2,500 pound, V-8 powered compact.

Along the way, she has never stopped maintaining it to perfection. She says she has no doubt she has come out better financially than people buying many new cars over a lifetime.
She has the original bill of sale and keeps all the receipts for its maintenance and repair work in one three-inch-thick notebook, along with "the name of every mechanic who has worked on that car. Or I should say," she corrects herself, "every mechanic who has served it."