First congratulations to another testimony of the impressive longevity of Volvos.

Second, those miles are likely to be "Imperial statute miles". Those are just the plain "miles" still used in the automobile world in the USA, and until several decades ago in other countries that now know better such as UK and Australia.

The other type of "miles" still commonly used in the world are the (longer) "nautical miles". It is the unit of measurement for aviation distances in the non-metric world, and thus the unit of all your frequent-flier accounts in the USA airlines.

Just for reference:

1 (statute) mile = 1.609 kilometers
1 nautical mile = 1.15078 statute miles

There is no established "shorter" imperial mile. What is still around as an imperial unit versus a different USA unit, is the gallon.

Back to Volvos, my oldest car only has the equivalent of 402 Megameters. George's car already surpassed the 1 Gigameter !

Cheers,

--
Andres - '86 785 VE 250kmiles (402Mmeters); '98 V70-T5 (wife's wagon)