When I was a dealership mechanic many, many years ago, we once had a new car with a deep engine noise that after several tries, nobody had been able to fix. The only way to claim the warranty for replacement was to seize the engine so one of the guys suggested turning the rear main bearing upside down to keep it from getting oil. We did that and drove it probably 30 miles and the engine still ran fine, so we drained the oil. It got really noisy, but we put another 20 miles on it and it was still going. Finally we drained the coolant and one of the guys just stood on the throttle in park. After about 3 minutes it finally seized and we were able to warranty the engine!

Not saying there was no damage done in our early attempts to kill it, but an engine is a lot tougher than you'd think.

There was probably some oil left in the car. The low pressure light doesn't necessarily mean the engine will seize.

It's not...there would have been some in the sump but not showing on the dipstick. Simple logic derived logically in the best Mr Spock tradition.

The car still had enough oil in it to not seize using the amount that you should would make the engine last for the longest time possible just because ur oils full it only used little bits at a time anyway.

I was a child when this happened. My father started changing the oil and left it to empty. Went to the barn to see the horses. My mother came to the car and left to town to buy groceries. 8 miles to town and back. It was the late 80's so we did not have cell phones. She did not notice the oil pressure light. When she came back we just finished the oil change. We had the car for 3 years after that and it worked great. Then we selled it but didn't mention the oil incident. The car was a small shopping bag. Daihatsu Charade with a 3 cylinder engine.