Volvo is a Swedish car manufacture that was founded in 1927. Because Sweden is known to produce high quality iron ore, company founders chose to use the ancient sign for ore as the company logo. The circle and arrow, the sign of mars is also considered to symbolize iron. Both symbols were incorporated and registered as Volvo trademarks.
Volvo has earned several distinctive reputations over the years; probably one of the best is the one it has earned for safety. Volvo engineers have come up with several innovative safety features that have eventually been adopted by most car manufacturers around the world. The concept for safety glass belongs to Volvo. In 1944, laminated glass was introduced in the PV Volvo. By 1958, another standard safety features was introduced by Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin who invented and patented the modern three-point safety belt. This was a standard feature in all Volvo’s by 1959. The company produced cars with the first padded dashboards including them in the 1956 version of the Amazon. The next safety feature pioneered by Volvo was the first rear facing child safety seat in 1964 and introduced the booster seat for children too big for the car seat but still small enough to slip out of the seat belt. The booster seat was introduced in 1978. Safety was a concern for Volvo from its very foundation. Managing director Assar Gabrielsson and Gustav Larson, technical manager were quoted in 1927 as saying, “Cars are driven by people. The guiding principle behind everything we make at Volvo, therefore, is and must remain safety”.
Attention to safety did not stop with car seats either. It was Volvo that designed and implemented what we now know as the high mounted stoplights. The idea that the centrally located light at or slight above the vision of a driver behind a car would be noticed faster than just to taillights mounted on both the right and left rear portions a vehicle. The use of the high mounted stop light on all vehicles market in the United States became a federal mandate for the 1986 model year. Bolbe was also the first to propose and develop the use of airbags. By 1995, Volvo had introduced side airbags and would install them as standard equipment in all Volvos. The first head protection airbags were also designed by Volvo. Testing authorities have proven that side head protection curtain airbags can reduce risk of death in a side impact by up to 40% and brain injury by up to 55%, as well as providing protection in a rollover situation. The BLIS system, which detects vehicles entering the Volvo’s blind spot with side view mirror mounted systems, was introduced in 2004.
Volvo’s attention to safety is one of the most compelling reasons family list when choosing Volvo over other models. During the seventies and eighties Volvo did some slippage in sales due in part to a boxy outdated design. Designers within Volvo went to work on correcting these images.