Volvo

Assar Gabrielsson and Gustaf Larson were having dinner together in Stockholm one evening in 1924. They talked about cars. Specifically, they talked about how terrible most cars were for Swedish roads. Sweden had brutal winters. Ice on the highways. Snow buried country roads for months. Most cars sold in Sweden came from other countries, designed for places with mild weather and smooth pavement. They cracked, rusted, and broke. Gabrielsson and Larson believed they could do better. Three years later, in April 1927, their first car rolled out of a factory in Gothenburg. They called it the Volvo ÖV 4. The locals nicknamed it Jakob for reasons nobody quite remembers. It was not a beautiful car. But it was solid. Thick steel. Tough suspension. Built to survive Swedish winters. From that first day, th... More