Assar
Gabrielsson and Gustav Larson founded Volvo in 1924. The first
Volvo car was the 1950cc Jakob, production got underway in 1927.
Volvo’s idea was to build a motorcar more appropriate to
the Scandinavian climate than the US manufacturers were offering,
Swedish steel would be used along with imported components.
Gabrielson financed the production of a dozen prototypes, with
bodies styled in Sweden by Helmer Mas Olle. Ship builder Pentaverken
built and supplied the engines, and SKF agreed to fund the production
of the first 1000 cars, to be built at the Lundby factory near
Gothenburg from 1927.
By 1932, the company was showing a profit and output was around
1000 cars a year, although demand eased slightly due to the mid-30’s
recession. SKF surrendered control of Volvo in 1935, and at the
same time Volvo took over Pentaverken, which went on to become
the marine-engineering side of Volvo.
The first production of Volvo’s modish-Ghia designed P1800
(launched in 1960) coupe was somewhat complicated. The steel bodies
were tooled-up for and built in Britain by Pressed Steel in Scotland
and then forwarded to Jensen, who with chassis parts supplied
from Sweden, assembled the complete cars.
Although not a true sports car, the high-waisted P1800 was a good
cruiser and with its overdrive gearbox had an acceptable top speed
of more than 100mph. Attractive and practical, the P1800 rapidly
gained popularity despite its high price tag, and its profile
was further increased by its weekly appearances in the television
series The Saint, driven by the star of the show Roger Moore,
who happened to own the car in real life. Volvo, however, were
never happy with the quality of the Jensen-built cars, and eventually
moved production to Sweden in 1964, the new car to be known as
the 1800S.
Throughout the 1980’s, Volvo launched several new models,
including the enormously popular 240, the 740, the 760, the 940,
and the 960.
In 1999, Ford
took a controlling interest in Volvo.
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