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Comment by daneel_w | Hacker News Reader

A friend of mine, an auto mechanic and Saab lover, drives an old Saab 99 from the early 80s. It has gone over 45k Scandinavian miles (~300k US miles) on the original engine and still going. He will swear any day that no better cars than the pre-1999 Saabs were ever made.

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Counter point: the gearbox in the Turbo 99s & 900s is notorious for breaking because the construction of it was originally spec'd out for the torque of the non-turbo engine and Saab never revisited this when it put a turbocharger on the engine. So the gears can break under the additional torque.

Also one of the reasons, as I discovered, why the 900 is sadly not a good candidate for EV conversion. The transaxle would just break to pieces if you put the torque of an electric motor on there. Especially considering for a car like that you'd want something sporty.

My first Saab odometer only had 5 digits (Saab 96). I remember it cycling past 99999, resetting, and ultimately driving it to about 13000 miles :)

Wait, Saab made cars with odometers that actually use Scandinavian miles? Is this a Saab thing? Or are all cars sold in Norway/Sweden set up that way?

I’ve never heard of cars in Scandinavia using that measure. Hint: I grew up in Scandinavia in the 80ies.

The Scandinavian Mile[0] exists, but it's not a thing in Denmark - just Sweden and Norway. There is a separate Danish mile, but I've never heard anyone talk about it in Denmark, although you can still find the odd mile stone [1] using a mile that's different to both the Scandinavian one and the UK/USA one.

But yes, using the Scandinavian mile for a car's odometer would be strange even by Swedish standards.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_mile

[1] https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milep%C3%A6l

They don't, the odometers measure kilometers. The "mil" (10 km) is simply the smallest distance we care for in terms of a car's state.

I think 45k miles is just a way of saying 450k kilometers. We use the term "mil" a lot (1 mil = 10 km), but easy to confuse it with miles when using it internationally / in English.

No they are always in kilometers (and sometimes with one decimal), but in Sweden we never really discuss individual kilometers in terms of a car's usage, only Scandinavian miles ("mil") - one of which is 10 kilometers.

Damn, that is one nice car. Had the reputation of being the car former hippy teachers drive, but I always loved them. Get me an Aero so!

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