World of Volvo Is a Swedish Shrine to Safety and Design

On April 14, 1927, Swedish entrepreneurs Assar Gabrielsson and Gustaf Larsson produced the first example of their first car, the Volvo ÖV4. The open-topped car rolled off the assembly line, an engineer put it in first gear, and… the car rolled backward.

The official explanation was that someone had installed the rear differential the wrong way; the unofficial one: a young, ambitious company, perhaps moving a little too fast. Though Volvo got off to an inauspicious start, by the company's third year it was already turning a profit, and since then has established a reputation for durability, design, and most of all, innovation in safety.

Now, Volvo is celebrating its 97th birthday with the opening of what it calls "World of Volvo" in the company’s hometown of Gothenburg, Sweden. I was invited to visit this joint venture between Volvo Cars and Volvo Group—those are the guys who build the semi-trucks, diggers, and other fun stuff. It’s a part corporate museum, part pine-filled event space that the company calls a “brand experience center.” Think BMW Welt, but with mass timber and more natural light.

For those of us who geek out on cars and engineering, the most interesting part of it all is the exhibition, which starts out with an interactive portion before walking through Volvo’s history. In the interactive hall, you can simulate distracted and drowsy driving, dock a virtual reality boat (remember, Volvo makes more than just cars), and walk through some of Volvo’s inventions, from three-point seatbelts to the lambda, or oxygen, sensor.

But I was there for the cars. There are roughly 50 of them, spanning Volvo’s archives from that very first ÖV4 design to the present day. Some of the most significant include Irv Gordon’s three-million-mile P1800, the Environmental Concept Car that previewed the P2 S80’s design with a wild turbine-hybrid powertrain back in 1992, and the Iron Maven, a PV544 that a team of female engineers painstakingly swapped the drivetrain and interior from a modern S60 T8 into.

Then, there are things you’ve never heard of—an electric concept from the ‘80s designed to carry urban mail, the King of Sweden’s car that he uses once a year in a vintage