From the February 2017 issue
If the Volvo brand were a Rorschach blot, most Americans would see a station wagon. But this didn?t come about as the result of some Swedish plot for domination of the American suburbs. It was an accident.
In the mid-1950s, around the time that Volvo first considered exporting cars to the United States, the brand was unsuccessfully experimenting with selling chassis to independent coachbuilders, but in so doing had built up a surplus of unsold chassis. ?So,? says Volvo historian Per-Åke Fröberg, ?the management said, ?Let?s start to do our own wagon.? ? Aimed at Sweden?s small-business owners who needed a practical car and a family car but who couldn?t afford both, the wagon was a way to grow the lineup and use the extra platforms. The resulting Duett and subsequent Amazon were oddball outliers and likewise found homes with Ameri­can oddball outliers. ?East Coast or West Coast. Liberal, highly educated, intellectual,? Fröberg says. ?Somewhat radical, a bit bohemic.? After that, the brand more or less made a wagon version of every model.
It was with the release of the 144 wagon that the longroof Volvo began to morph into the rectilinear package seen in our minds? eye. But the real breakthrough for the brand in America came with the 200-series estate, introduced in 1974. By the time its production run ended in 1993, nearly 2.9 million had been sold worldwide. Based on Volvo?s Experimental Safety Car, shown at the 1972 Geneva motor show, the 2...