PARKVILLE, Md. (WJZ)—So how many miles do you have on your car? This may be hard to believe, but there’s a Baltimore County woman whose trusty old Honda has just reached an amazing milestone.

Ron Matz has more on the road in Parkville.

For Maria Rose and husband Danny Elswick, Willie Nelson’s hit song “On the Road Again” takes on a whole new meaning. Their 1990 Honda Civic has just hit the 500,000 mile mark.

“This is such a big deal to me because it’s been so long to get to this point,” said Rose. “I’ve waited years and years just to see how far this car would go. She’s just so dependable. We just breeze along on the highway.”

“I cried when it hit 500,000 miles,” Rose added. “I’m really sentimental with the car. It’s our friend. It travels with us and never lets us down.”

As entertainers Rose and Elswick travel the country. The musicians have been to New Orleans 40 times.





“We’re on the road a lot,” Rose said. “In September, we’re going back to Minnesota. In the fall we going to Branson. Next year we’ve already got bookings in Mississippi and Michigan and probably a couple of trips to New Orleans in between. We’ve been to New Orleans about 40 times.”

Rose says she’s loved this Honda from the start.

“We bought the car in 1992,” Rose recalled. “I had a car that was getting bad. I kept seeing the car and researched it and found one in Annapolis. It had 48,000 miles on it. I would love to find the original owner and say thank you for selling your car.”

The car has never been re-painted, although some rust was removed. The windows are manual, and Rose still has the original timing belt.

“Anything that has to come off of it, any original Honda part I started saving,” she said. “I’ve got a couple of rotors and sensors and the timing belt.”

Recently a woman made them an offer.

“We’ve been stopped more than once by people who want to buy the car,” said Danny Elswick, Rose’s husband. “Recently, we were coming out of a shopping center and a lady stopped us. She said ‘I love this car. Do you want to sell it?’ Of course it’s not for sale. That car will be with us forever. There’s no stopping it.”

You may think 500,000 miles are a lot, but there’s more to come.

“First of all, I’m married to a crazy woman,” Elswick said. “Not a whole lot of things have gone wrong with this car. We’re not pushing it to get all these miles. Usually something starts dollaring you to death, but it hasn’t given us that at all.”

Rose says she hasn’t had a car payment in 16 years.

“I’m going to keep going and going,” Rose said. “I nicknamed her Husky. She’s like one of the Alaskan sled dogs. We’ve seen them up in Alaska many times. They just want to keep going and going, and she’s ready for the next 100,000.”

To read more about Rose and Elswick’s car, click here.