The Nordic design nous of Volvo

We travel to Sweden to see first-hand how design has influenced one of its most successful companies, Volvo.

The design of the Volvo XC90’s headlamps is inspired by Thor’s hammer. Courtesy Volvo

Having spent time in Sweden's second city, Gothenburg, any visitor might reasonably assume it's a legal requirement to drive a Volvo. On the south-west coast of this Nordic country, Gothenburg is clean, welcoming and really safe for drivers – because they all appear to be strapped into the four-wheeled fortresses that are designed, developed and built there. Volvo, it appears, is an integral part of society – not only in its home city, but across Sweden.

Just as when you try to dissect what makes many Italian sports cars so sublimely beautiful, why a Rolls-Royce is so majestic or the reason 1950s Cadillacs can be so over-the-top, Volvo has been shaped and influenced over the decades by its surroundings. The country itself is fresh of air, sparse in its countryside accoutrements, cold but not bitterly so (thanks to its position in relation to the Gulf Stream), varied in its topography. The people are warm and welcoming, with many working with wood (there’s a reason the air is so clean: trees everywhere) or reaping harvests from the icy-cold waters that surround the country. Swedes love the outdoors – there’s no choice, really.

Swedish design tends to be simple and fuss-free. A good example of this is Drottningholm Palace in Sweden’s capital, Stockholm. During the 1700s, the palace was redesigned and extensively modernised to emulate the French rococo style, with Chateau de Versailles, south of Paris, used as an architectural reference point. See photographs of the two, and you can tell the French masterpiece was an influencing factor, but there was something tangible lost in translation. The Swedes’ natural affinity for clean, uncluttered design meant its own royal residence appeared less fancy. As a result, it still looks relatively modern in the 21st century.

Volvo’s people like to use these two palaces to illustrate what makes Swedish design different, before proudly speaking about the company’s eight-decade-long history. I’ll go into Volvo’s important contributions to occupant and pedestrian safety in a future article, but this, too, is inescapably Swedish. The country’s hierarchy likes to look after its subjects, and make sure they’re as healthy as possible and satisfied with life. Volvo’s obsession with reducing the likelihood of serious injuries and fatalities is not to be underestimated, and again, this cannot help but seep through into the designs of the cars ­themselves.

A tour of the Volvo Museum on the bleak outskirts of coastal Gothenburg isn’t the bore-fest I expect, and as I listen to the guide explaining how the company’s design ethos evolved over the years, I can see for myself that this is much more than the Ikea of the motoring industry. Whatever it was able to do, throughout history, to minimise its effect on the environment or the welfare of others, it did – sometimes, the resultant designs were, in retrospect, dreadful; sometimes, they worked wonders.

Pride of place in the museum goes to the P1800 of 1961 and the 1800ES estate model of 1972 – surely the most beautiful production cars Volvo ever made. The two-door sports car was made world-famous for its use in the television series The Saint, which starred Roger Moore in the titular role, but it was always much more than a pretty face. A P1800S, owned since it was new in 1966 by the same man, Irv Gordon, holds the Guinness World Record for the longest distance driven. In September 2013, Gordon's red Volvo passed the three-million-mile (4.8m-kilometre) mark, and it's still going strong in its largely original state.

“When the first cars arrived in Sweden,” says my guide, “they soon fell apart due to the harsh climate we have here. So when Volvo started building cars in 1927, they were designed and engineered to last much longer than any others.” That has been Volvo’s stock-in-trade: if you want a car that’s properly screwed together and will last longer than you, buy one.

“Cars are driven by people. The guiding principle behind everything we make at Volvo, therefore, is and must remain, safety.” That was a statement issued by Assar Gabrielsson and Gustaf Larson in 1927, and looking at some of the company’s offerings from the 1970s and 80s, that ethos was taken to extremes with designs that are rather tanklike, with enormous, protruding bumpers and exceedingly squared edges. Driving a Volvo back then marked you out as someone who placed personal well-being as the highest priority when choosing a car, while everyone else was being sucked in by either luxury or affordability. Even when its cars were design jokes, they were still considered “prestige”, because they weren’t exactly cheap.

Slowly but surely, Volvos became more “normal”, yet they have always looked Swedish. That’s because the company’s designers have always looked to their own heritage for stimulus. Consider, if you will, the LED daytime-running lamps featured as standard kit on the brand new XC90 SUV. They are unique, and according to the company, inspired by Thor’s hammer.

Thor, the mythical Norse god, was said to unleash terrifying supernatural forces with every blow of that instrument; now it has been immortalised in a Volvo’s headlamps. This, in itself, makes the XC90 worthy of serious consideration in my mind, because it shows the designers are having fun with their work, as well as integrating their culture while keeping safety paramount.

The Swedes are known for innovation. The adjustable wrench, the three-point safety belt, the Celsius thermometer and the zipper all hail from this part of Scandinavia. Not bad for a country with a population of 9.8 million people. And Volvo’s drive towards innovation in motoring is now extending to autonomous driving, with a programme being put together for 100 of its cars to be tested around the streets of Gothenburg without humans operating the controls. Again, the Swede effect is strong here.

Some 85 per cent of Sweden’s citizens live in cities, and Volvo believes that driverless cars will contribute to vastly increased standards of living for those in urban enclaves. Without the need for drivers, Volvo says, streets can be narrower. The result will be better use of space by planners. Without drivers, there will be less pollution, because cars will only be used when necessary and in optimum working conditions. Without drivers, there will be no fatalities, because almost all accidents are caused by human error.

I get the reasons for this push, but I don’t want a car that drives me. What I want is to be able to drive a Volvo that looks exactly like the two recent concept cars it unveiled: 2014’s Concept Coupe and last year’s Concept Estate – two minimalist beauties that look like nothing else and could only have been designed in Sweden.

If you’re listening, Volvo, please build them to look exactly like these showstoppers. Build them soon, and make the autonomous drive an option I can switch off at will – that really would be the best of both worlds. Somehow, I reckon you might just be thinking along the same lines.

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