June of 1979 I bought a 1969 Dodge Coronet the day before I got out of the Navy, I gave $400 for it. It had 141,000 miles on it. I drove it from San Diego to Tacoma, Washington and the only problem was 2 flat tires. The first one was near Sacramento and I put on the spare. The second tire blew at 70 mph just south of Eugene, Oregon. The tire rubber wrapped around the rear axle causing me to spin into the median and just missing a tractor trailer rig. A kind gentleman loaned me his spare to get to the next exit and I bought 4 new tires. The morning after I got home, I tried to start the car and it would not start. The timing chain had jumped when I shut the car off the previous day.
A friend of mine bought an old International Scout 2 via eBay (they stopped making them in 1980 so it was at least 26 years old at the time). He lives near Oakland CA, the truck was up in Seattle WA. As an adventure, we flew up there and drove it back. About 800 miles.
Registration problems. No brake lights. Lock problems. No windshield wipers. Speedometer didn’t work (we had to drive by feel - through experience we found that there was a pronounced shimmy right at 65mph so we’d drive at the Shimmy Point). Miscellaneous electrical issues. Bench seat that slid around. Engine work done incorrectly by previous owner (he hadn’t reassembled everything tightly when he put it back together which we discovered in the middle of nowhere as oil leaked out of the block). Did I mention that it was nighttime and snowing when we picked the vehicle up?
Anyhow it was quite an adventure. I don’t know if there’s a record for “Greatest percentage of vehicle jury-rigged” but we were just praying that we didn’t get pulled over for anything, highway patrol would have had a field day.
We tell the story at parties and get major laughs. He’s still got the truck, much improved now (fixing cars is his hobby).
[nitpick]You did not drive to Tampa Bay, FL unless you actually drove into the bay. Tampa Bay does not exist as a piece of land you can drive on. You might have driven to Tampa, or the Tampa Bay area, but you did not drive to Tampa Bay.[/nitpick]
I once drove my 1991 Jeep Cherokee with ~200K miles on it from St. Petersburg (or Tampa Bay, FL if you like 
) to Pittsburgh. And back. I say ~ because the odometer had stopped working at 182K.
This was after trips to New Orleans and all over Florida. Go have a tune-up if it will make you feel better, but high mileage does not mean it will burst into flames once you cross the state line.
Oh, forgot to add-
this car had no shroud (fan housing) because the plastic had cracked and disintegrated. Also had a piece of copper tubing (used in HVAC work) for a length of the radiator hose (stuffed into the existing hose and secured with hose clamps) because when the shroud exploded when I was driving one day, the fan ripped up a good foot of the radiator hose.
That was the epitome of “beater.” I wish I still had it, but I sold it because it was too big and not so great on gas and couldn’t justify driving it anymore.
We drove to Niagara Falls last summer in our 120,000+ Dodge Caravan (in fact it turned 123,456 on the drive back and I missed it :smack: ).
It did, in fact, fail on the trip. We pulled into a parking lot, turned the engine off, and it started making lots of clicking / chirping noises (like it was trying to sound the “lights on” warning etc.) and wouldn’t turn on. CAA saved the day - it was a corroded battery cable. The other Dodge Caravan in the same parking lot, also from the US, couldn’t be started quite so easily (the CAA guy got to handle two calls with one stop, lucky fellow!) and had to be towed! I think ours was more of a random thing, rather than related to the mileage though.
Honestly, if you’re thinking of a long trip with any car, it’s not a bad idea to get it checked over. You’ll be going 95 the whole way so you won’t be far from help in case anything does happen.
My 1995 Lexus ES 300 has 337,000 miles on it at present. It’s recently made road trips exceeding 500 miles. All those miles are mine, BTW. I bought it new!
Damn, I love that model so much that I just added another one to the Mercotan fleet, a newer one, 2000 ES 300 with a measly 96,000 miles (not even broken in yet).