New ST1100 milestone reached

Inquiring minds want to know...

Many many moons ago, for reasons I can't recall, I was in the car with a friend's brother, who hit the brakes while we were driving. He then got out of the car, went to the trunk, returned, and took a photo of the odometer. The Chevy Nova odometer had turned over.

This may not be accurate, but I'd like to believe it was 1,000,000 miles. True or not, my mind has awarded it this legendary achievement (and, if wrong, I've misinformed a lot of people over the years).
 
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Vespa said:
Inquiring minds want to know...

Many many moons ago, for reasons I can't recall, I was in the car with a friend's brother, who hit the brakes while we were driving. He then got out of the car, went to the trunk, returned, and took a photo of the speedometer. The Chevy Nova speedo had turned over.

This may not be accurate, but I'd like to believe it was 1,000,000 miles. True or not, my mind has awarded it this legendary achievement (and, if wrong, I've misinformed a lot of people over the years).
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American cars of that era had odometers that rolled over at 100,000 miles, so unless this was its 10th trip around there's no way it was 1 million.
 
dwalby said:
American cars of that era had odometers that rolled over at 100,000 miles, so unless this was its 10th trip around there's no way it was 1 million.
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Adult me understands this, but young me wants to believe.

This was an older Nova, so it most likely had a 5-digit odometer (not speedometer, oops), as cars didn't began switching over to 6-digits until the early 70s (IIRC?). Also, a million miles. That's a trip around the block once or twice.

Edit: Then again, young me believed they saw a ghost and was disheartened that the original (original) Star Wars wasn't based on a true story. Then again, thinking on that, adult me is also disheartened. The world is plenty interesting as is (which also reminds me of the old Irish curse - May you live in interesting times*), but wouldn't it be more interesting if...

* Yeah, it's a great turn of words, but not at all ancient or Irish.
 
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Vespa said:
This was an older Nova, so it most likely had a 5-digit odometer (not speedometer, oops), as cars didn't began switching over to 6-digits until the early 70s (IIRC?).
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I'm no expert on the subject as I've mostly owned American trucks, not cars. I had a 1991 F-150 that still had a 100,000 mile odometer, I don't think they added the 6th digit until they started going electronic rather than mechanical in '92 and later. Technically, the old 5-digit odometers had a 6th digit, but it was 1/10th of a mile units. I'm guessing American cars followed a similar timeline, so nothing in the '70s or '80s would have had a million mile odometer, but there may have been an exception or two here and there. I had a 1980 VW Scirocco that had a million mile odometer, it was more common in that era on European cars than American cars, since having a 100,000 km odometer wasn't very practical and they just re-geared the km odometers to register in miles for US versions.
 
dwalby said:
I'm no expert on the subject as I've mostly owned American trucks, not cars. I had a 1991 F-150 that still had a 100,000 mile odometer, I don't think they added the 6th digit until they started going electronic rather than mechanical in '92 and later. Technically, the old 5-digit odometers had a 6th digit, but it was 1/10th of a mile units. I'm guessing American cars followed a similar timeline, so nothing in the '70s or '80s would have had a million mile odometer, but there may have been an exception or two here and there. I had a 1980 VW Scirocco that had a million mile odometer, it was more common in that era on European cars than American cars, since having a 100,000 km odometer wasn't very practical and they just re-geared the km odometers to register in miles for US versions.
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TIL - I thought the early 90s were actually when the last of the 5-digit (whole number) odometers switched over. I probably learned that on the Internet or in a movie, so, of course, took it as gospel. That said, just a few months ago I found out that I've been mispronouncing a word I've been using my whole life. You know, that would've been a funnier and more powerful sentence if I actually remembered what the word was. Even better if the word had something to with remembering things.
 
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