Let's Roll
I have always had a soft spot for Volvo's. The movie Crazy People, starring the late hobbit Dudley Moore, featured a fictitious ad campaign that summed it up nicely: "Volvo. They're boxy but good." Very true. I or my family has owned about a half dozen Volvos, most of them the 200 series. Unassuming cars, but built like tanks and full of little innovations that were well ahead of their time. I guess it takes a certain person to really understand the value of good engineering. Some people's cranks just don't get turned by it. I was trying to explain this to a co-worker of mine who falls into this category. "Volvo's are just...boring" he proclaimed, while adjusting the seat of his gold Chrysler Sebring, the ultimate Thrifty Del Boca Vista cruiser. Yeah...Volvos are boring. Is it just me, or do the interiors of Sebrings smell like impending death?
They're boxy but good. Well, maybe Volvos are not that boxy anymore. They are still good though. In sharp contrast to GM and SAAB, Ford has left Volvo alone for the most part and they are doing better than ever. In this spirit, I thought it appropriate to provide a little history lesson on the nave 'Volvo'. Having studied Latin, I have known for a long time that Volvo meant "I roll". The significance of this name is that Volvo was once a ball-bearing company. Get it? The Volvo symbol, which some mistake for the male symbol so shagadiciously featured in the Austin Powers films, is really the symbol for iron ore, again tying back to the ball bearing manufacture. Anyway, Volvo has decided to return to their roots and more prominently feature the symbol front and center on the grills of their not-so-boxy-but-still-good cars. Check out the full story here, as well as other fun Volvo stuff at Sweedespeed.
