10 Fascinating Facts You Never Knew About Volvo
Volvo Cars celebrates its birth year as 1927, the year the first Volvo, the ÖV4, was produced, and, for the first years was primarily a truck and bus manufacturer before the introduction of the PV444 in 1944. The PV444 and PV544 would make Volvo known for cars, too, and the P1800 would too, especially, introduced in 1961. The Volvo 200 series, meanwhile, introduced in 1974, would make the brand an icon, especially in America, where Volvos were first sold by a dealer in California in 1955.
Volvo came to be known over the years for an emphasis on safety, built on its heritage of safety innovations, like perfecting the three-point seatbelt in 1959, and then not patenting it and giving it to the world for free. Volvos have never been particularly stylish, per se, but have developed a hard-won reputation for sturdiness and, in recent years, premium quality, too, especially with Volvo interiors. Like Mazda, Volvo might never be considered true luxury, but Volvo hasn’t minded, as any visit to the Volvo Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden, will reveal. Volvo’s carved out a niche for itself among automakers that has stood the test of time.
Today, Volvo sells 10 different models in the American market, from full-electric models like the C40 Recharge, EX30, EX90, and XC40 Recharge, to SUVs including the XC60 and XC90, sedans including the S60 and S90, and station wagons including the V60 and V90. Volvo produced over 709,000 cars last year worldwide and has also opened a sprawling new production facility in South Carolina for EVs that broke ground in 2015 and is 2.3 million square feet. Volvo will celebrate its 100th anniversary in a few years and seems well-positioned for further success, which was not a guarantee as recently as the global economic crisis in 2008. What follows are ten interesting facts about Volvo you might not know.
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