Man Donates Saab To Car Museum After Driving It 1 Million Miles

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Not long after his divorce, Peter Gilbert treated himself to a new sports car - a Saab 900 SPG, which stands for Special Performance Group.

Seventeen years and more than 1 million miles later, Gilbert donated his car to the Wisconsin Automotive Museum. The car survived eight deer collisions, including one that punched a hole in the radiator, before it was parked for safekeeping at the museum in Hartford.

"I couldn't kill that many deer with a gun," said Gilbert, a financial services salesman from Glendale.

Saab, the Swedish car-maker that's a division of General Motors, verified the high mileage on Gilbert's car last summer. Almost everything on the vehicle was original equipment, except for the front hoods and other parts that were replaced after the car-deer collisions.

Gilbert was meticulous about vehicle maintenance, including regular oil changes with premium, synthetic oil. He replaced the car's transmission at about 200,000 miles, but beyond that the engine was hardly touched.

"I knew someone who put 2.5 million miles on a Volvo, but the engine was rebuilt several times," Gilbert said.

Originally from Britain, Gilbert fell in love with Saabs when the cars were winning European road rallies in the 1960s. His trusty 900 SPG was no slouch, either, having once clocked 135 mph at the Road America race track in Elkhart Lake.

"I was taking the lead in a race for a while," Gilbert recalled.

A long journey
That was the same car he drove seven days a week, 365 days a year, racking up extreme mileage in his business travel across rural Wisconsin.

"When I hit 600,000 miles, the car still wasn't burning oil. That's when I thought it could go a million miles," Gilbert said.

But Wisconsin winters, and road salt, took their toll on the sporty little car. While its exterior still looked pretty good, the frame had rusted to the point where it might not have been safe in a serious collision.

"There was no point in driving the car any longer, even though it might have gone another million miles," Gilbert said.

With some sadness, he donated the car to the museum, which has some rare vehicles such as the "Kissel," manufactured in Hartford from 1906 to 1931, and a Nash built in Kenosha in 1916.

For Gilbert, turning over the car's keys to the museum was like putting an elderly family member in a nursing home.

"But I know where the car is, and I can visit," he said. "And before I took her to the museum, I had a full detail job done. She was like a bride getting ready for her wedding. It was the first time that her carpets were thoroughly cleaned in 17 years."

Saab showed some interest in the car and videotaped it when the odometer rolled over the 1-million-mile mark, at a Saab owners' convention in Lake George, N.Y., in August.

Saab executives rode in the car and discussed putting it in their museum in Sweden. Gilbert hoped they would give him a new car, as a replacement, but he didn't get so much as a T-shirt from Saab.

"I am a little disappointed in them," he said.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=538098&format=print