The full quote in dirty imperial units:
I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters: not the mortgage, not the store, not my team and all their bullshit. For those ten seconds or less, I’m free.
– The Fast and the Furious
How was this translated to metric?
Can’t say about other countries, but here in general you just say “n liters” dropping “per 100 kilometers”. Another metric that conveys the same thing.
Interesting-- does the word exist at all? Can you talk about a reliable appliance as something you can “get a lot of mileage” from?
We’d say: ‘What is the usage (of fuel) of your car’ it’s usually expressed in his expressed in kilometers per liter.
Right, but beyond that we’ve got further definitions of the word meaning “usefulness” or “getting benefit from”. So like a clip that had lasting support throughout a political campaign that can be used over and over could be described as something you “get a lot of mileage out of”. Does that exist in metric countries?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mileage
I’m not aware of a specific idiom that conveys that meaning in my language. We’d say ‘it’s economical/thrifty’ but there’s no car related idiom. A combined word like ‘kilometerrendement’ might be conjured up, but isn’t in common use.
As sayings go, they predate the petrol engine like : ‘that’ll keep the stove burning for a while’ or ‘sailing with the wind’
I think this idiom is specific to english-speaking north america, due to it being vast and car-centric, we have a similar idiom that means hardy, reliable and getting things done - workhorse, this one is used in multiple slavic languages and in english (I think).
We also use workhorse for sure