Where a photo can lead you
Many years ago, there was a TV show called “Connections” with James Burke. He could take something like a beetle scientist and link him to Sherlock Holmes with amazing clarity. Search YouTube for “James Burke.” So the other day, Mark, at Hemmings Motor News, sent us this 855 R photo just for our enjoyment, and I thought heck, lets post it to our blog.
So we asked Mark to get permission from the photographer, Lance Cole, and he came back with the following:
“This is a tuned 855 T5R with specially gray sprayed wheels. It is owned by French Swedish car guy Alain who also owns a concourse rally tuned 300bhp Volvo PV 544. Alain hosts a Volvo Saab French Swedish day in Brittany, France every year. The stunning photo was taken by well-known automotive and aerospace photographer and author Lance Cole in Brittany, France at dawn this past November. I have owned seven Volvos and three examples of a certain other Swedish car make! I love the V70 – it has room for all my Nikons and kits and soothes my bad back like no other car. My life was saved by a Volvo and its side impact system 10 years ago and I was the only person uninjured in a crash involving three cars and a truck.”
Lance asked if I could also include a shameless plug for his work. He is available worldwide for transport and travel photography and other commissions.
And now the connection part – his new book, “Secrets of the Spitfire,” is to be published by Pen and Sword books in Britain in April next year. So he and I emailed about how that was a plane I dreamed about when younger. I know war isn’t cool, but the Spitfire and P51 Mustang were just amazing pieces of technology. How beautifully graceful in design and function both are. I always loved taking things apart (not always getting them back together – sorry Dad) and we talked about Duxford Museum in Britain and their fantastic collection of airplanes. Flying machines are pure and simple, nothing is in excess. On one visit there, passing between exhibits, there was a photograph of a photographer standing in front of a plane holding a huge (maybe 4′ long) camera who looked exactly like my boss Bob Austin. Then it dawned on me that it was Bob’s father. He flew in a De Havilland Mosquito.
From Bob: He (Bob’s father) flew a De Havilland Mosquito. He was part of the 8th Air Force located in the UK at a base named Watton. The Mosquito was a twin engine, all plywood plane that was equipped either as a light bomber or a photo reconnaissance plane.
My dad’s plane flew night photo recon before and after bombing runs. They had no guns or armor. Their secret to survival was speed. They could cruise at 400 mph with two Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. Very few Mosquitoes were in US livery, most were used by the RAF.
As Bob says, it’s the guy on the left..the one with hair.
Lance’s photo is just wonderful to look at and almost peaceful in those colors. I think 850 T5R was one of those legendary cars that will not only be a collector’s piece but will still be running for many years to come, as will S60 R and V70 R.
So its funny how one totally unrelated something leads to something else and in a way is related after all.
dan
Posted in 855R, Volvo History | 1 Comment »When we had two Apples at Volvo
During the winter of ’81 I moved back to Rockleigh, NJ, from California. Along with thousands of pounds of junk following us here, was an Apple II Plus. It was one hunk of computing power with 64 k of memory, single 5” floppy drive and no monitor – all for a bargain price of $2100. Little did I know that another employee at Volvo also had one, but his was pumped up to 128k and had a really cool black & white monitor.
Phil Cabot, who’s still here at Volvo and is our Manager of North American Parts, was responsible for pricing back then. Pac-Man was King, and then came along VisiCalc (first spread sheet software – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc). VisiCalc was the turning point for a toy to become a tool. Of course I couldn’t buy that software – it was too expensive – so I bootlegged a copy from a programming class I took in California. Phil actually bought his copy, from Computerland.
Our parts costs are based on many different controllable factors except foreign exchange rates. During our annual budget planning, we wrote in pencil on huge green colored paper, and ended up with lots of eraser marks. Then Phil put our parts sales on his Apple with VisiCalc. He could electronically change the exchange rate and the sales volume in an instant, and perform a competitive analysis. He remembers running two computers at Volvo and one at home. Every few hours he had to go back to our Rockleigh office from his home and change the floppies. According to Phil, “Due to the storage limitations of the Apple II, it took an entire weekend to run a competitive analysis as we needed to extract information from one floppy and combine it on another.”
His Swedish counterparts didn’t understand how a small computer could handle a national sales budget. So he packed up his Apple in a wooden foot locker, shipped it to Sweden and went over to give them a demo.
Phil’s demo was an instant success. He remembers the Swedes commenting something like: “Because we used the Apple in Sweden, as part of the business plan presentation, we received almost instant acceptance.” He remembers the VCC parts folks saying something like, “If the computer says that rising prices of X% will reduce our sales by Y%, then it must be correct.” Of course we controlled the calculations.
The world had changed.
I took VisiCalc and created a sales forecasting program based on historical sales of accessories verses vehicle sales. Unlike Phil, my program was sort of ‘self-correcting,’ meaning I figured out how to make each forecast from the previous months be very close to the target objective for each item, so my forecast verses sales were always sort of perfect, which looked good on paper but was not what I intended. Needless to say I never went to work in our IT group. PC programming wasn’t even close to being my strong point.
When I came to PR in ’94, we used Macs, because our advertising agency used Macs and we had joint projects. One year later Volvo mandated that we all have IBM desktops. We worked out a deal with IT to keep our Macs and promised to start working on our new IBMs within a year. We didn’t start working on those IBMs until day 364.
To help everyone learn how to use IBM PCs, our IT group held training sessions. My wife was one of our first instructors (later to become one of our lead Project Managers). I mentioned to her that Apple never offered any training programs, that it was so easy to use even I could do it, so why does IBM offer training…”So you can learn how to use it,” ugh.
Thanks Steve Jobs for changing our world.
dan
Posted in Sweden, Volvo History | 1 Comment »Why people smile when they sit in our cars
PV444 1958 S60 2011
When I brought home my first Volvo, a ’58 PV444, I didn’t noticed how uncomfortable the seats were. After I drove from Torrance to my Aunt and Uncle’s home in Livermore – about 300 miles – I couldn’t wait to get out of that car. I later bought a seat back cushion (a small coiled wire with cloth covering) that helped air circulate and gave me a little more back support, but it was still an uncomfortable journey. I did find the adjustment for the seat back, a small 10mm screw in the bottom of each seat fame side – clever but not practical – and there wasn’t any lumbar support. When I started at Volvo, out back behind our warehouse was a 164 that was accident damaged. I ‘borrowed’ the light tan leather front seats and threw away those ’58 back breakers. It was kind of hard to close the doors, but boy those were comfortable seats. So what happened between ’58 and ’68?
Volvo’s newly installed (1956) President Gunner Engellau, killed the P1900 fiberglass convertible, which was terrible to drive, had poor brakes, and guess what, rotten seats. He sensed that while we made good cars, except P1900, we really didn’t understand seat design. In the following years there were minor improvements to seat back and cushion design, but everything would change when he hired Doctor Ulf Nachemson who was a spinal specialist (thanks Bob for finding this) to work with Nils Bolin to teach us how to build good seats. Basically it was not rocket science to designing a comfortable seat, just ask someone who knows bones, how best to support our back, and you’ll have a great seat. I think aside from giving the world a three-point seat belt, Volvo’s next great accomplishment was to put a lumbar adjustment in seats.
Then again, here’s what USA Today’s automotive editor Jim Healy’s wrote in his 2009 C30 review:
The seats. You can’t talk about a Volvo without championing the seats as probably the industry’s most comfortable. You gotta wonder why all other automakers don’t simply copy ‘em.”
History of Volvo seats:
The Volvo seat was the result of scientific research conducted largely by Nils Bohlin, the person who just a few years earlier created the three-point safety belt. The new seat had two major new features: firstly, the backrest angle could be adjusted with a rotary control, and secondly, there was built-in adjustment of lumbar support in the backrest. Volvo was the first manufacturer in the world with these features.
Before this, the backrest angle could be adjusted to three preset positions. In the new seat, the backrest angle could be adjusted infinitely. The height of the seat above the floor could be set at a choice of three levels and at the front the seat cushion had softer foam padding than in the rest of the seat. The angle of the seat cushion could be adjusted to suit leg length or “driving experience,” as it was worded back in 1964.
The backrest was of a totally new design, lowering the burden on the body higher up towards the shoulders. However, the biggest news was that the backrest’s lumbar section could be adjusted to suit individual taste. This lumbar support consisted of two robust horizontally tensioned rubber straps whose tension could be altered via a rotary control in the side of the backrest. Another advantage with the new front seats was that they featured built-in attachments for a specially designed head restraint.
What is more, both front seats could now be moved much further fore and aft than before. The Volvo seat was big news from the viewpoints of both technology and safety. Previous seats may have been nice to look at but they were by no means designed to meet specific requirements. With the new seat, the Volvo driver took a giant step forward toward increased comfort and thus safer travel.
At the same time, a new type of upholstery material was introduced in Volvo’s models – vinyl. Together with the new design of the seat – Volvo did not hesitate to call it elegant – it was clear that this was a new era, an era when comfortable seating was regarded as important for safety on the road.
The Volvo seat was introduced on the 1965 model of the Amazon and also on the PV 544 and it was naturally also fitted in the 144 when it was launched a year later. The fact that the Volvo seat came to be the basis for continued seat and ergonomics development at Volvo – and still is – clearly highlights its obvious safety and comfort-enhancing properties.
dan
Posted in C30, interior, luxury, S60, Volvo History | 5 Comments »Tale of a Pig’s Nose
A recent posting on http://www.facebook.com/VolvocarsUS led one of our social media staffers to ask about our first SUV we have in storage. So, with a fresh cup of coffee and peanut butter filled pretzel puffs, here is the Pig’s Tale.
In 2000, I had money to find cars for our historical collection. By the time I bought Hogster (actual proper name is Sugga, Swedish for pigs nose since that is what the official name for TP21 Military Staff car became since it does look like a pigs nose), I had rounded up our PV4 and P1900. No one really knew VCNA had bought them, they just showed up in Rockleigh one day…surprise. Kind of better to ask forgiveness than permission kind of thing.
Anyway, I got word out to some Volvo owner friends that if they could find a good Sugga, to let me know. In the mean time there was one parked on Piermont Road, about 1/2 mile from my office window. I talked with its owner for more than five years and he was just happy to let it rust away. No idea where he got it or when, not the most friendly kind of guy. One day, I got a call from a Volvo owner in Phoenix, AZ about one that was in a used car lot. “Good condition,” like anyone would know otherwise. I bought it and shipped it to Rockleigh. When it arrived, it was another asking for forgiveness kind of buys. It was in good condition – even had the original olive green shovel and carburetor snorkel for fording streams. Even had a bicycle rack – I’ll get back to that in a moment.
So we played with it, driving it through the woods behind our office, showed it at Volvo Open House events, and then parked it with our collection at FAPS at Port Newark. Around the summer of 2001, Soren Johansson (who used to work in our PR group) asked about Sugga. Oh, I thought here I go with my career. “We want to borrow it.” SURE. We spent a small fortune getting it to almost 100 point car, it looked like the day it was born in 1957. All that was missing was its radio, and to this day, we can not find a set. Someone in Sweden said they were classified military equipment. Okay.
We took it to the Detroit Auto Show in January 2002 to be part of our XC90 launch to media. Let’s back up a few months. I got a call from our folks who put on auto show events, “Would you drive it on stage in Detroit?” Heck yeah, that’ll be a hoot. “Would you wear a Hawaiian shirt, shorts and sandals?” Yeah….okay. “How about being under a car cover, over Sugga, for 30 minutes?” Now realize Detroit is really cold in January, and trying to find a shirt, shorts and sandals anywhere outside of California or Florida in December is nearly impossible, and sitting under a car cover, this was going to be interesting.
So we painted (temporary peel paint) her bright Canary Yellow, threw on a 10’6″ surfboard, nice Cannondale off-road bike and she was ready to go. Hans-Olov Olsson (nick named H2O) was our CEO back then. He came on stage and started talking about how he is so proud to be here today to show the world our first SUV, that it was a masterpiece of technology, that it could go anywhere, anytime. Now you have to realize Swedes can be rather conservative, and maybe not a funny as some people, clearly Hans-Olov was being very serious at this point. So after a few minutes, they pulled off Sugga’s car cover and I drove up on stage, this being Volvo’s very first SUV. The place broke out in laughter and cheers.
Launching Sugga’s brother, XC90, was a complete success. Today, it still looks powerful in a very Scandinavian way and is still a strong seller for Volvo.
dan
Posted in Volvo History, XC90 | 1 Comment »
50 years since first P1800
Our friends up at Hemmings Motor News put up some nice photos of an 1800 ES ( later to morph into C30) up on their website.
“Swedish firm Caresto, led by former Volvo engineer and specialist builder Leif Tufvesson, chose to mark the 50th anniversary of the debut of Volvo’s P1800 sports coupe with an exciting resto-mod show car that they dubbed the P1800 GT.”
Interesting that they used an early ’egg crate’ grill on a ’72 ES, and the little air scoop near windshield is from around ’62. Car looks nasty.
Thanks Mark for your Hemmings Motor News piece.
dan
Posted in news, Volvo History | 2 Comments »Is an 11 year old design – timeless?
Around 1995, in our Rockleigh office, we had drawings of concepts that VCC was working on. One was an SUV. Then one day the drawing was gone. No one fessed up to taking it, it was just ‘gone’. Rolling forward to 2000 when we
showed XC90, I’ll be darned if that wasn’t it..I mean the one on that poster that no one knows where it went…it’s here.
Looking back, and in a sense forward, and listening to Peter Horbury, our design chief, talk about how he, and other designers strive for timeless design, XC90 seems to be heading in that direction. The car has such nice lines, it’s hard to imagine it being penned over 11 years ago, that today it has that strong Swedishness of Volvo. It’s a design that doesn’t ask you to define what the designer was thinking, it’s just one comfortable looking piece of steel.
Considering the technology we introduced with XC90 dates back to 2001, in my opinion, it is still one of, if not the safest SUV being offered. Before the car was launched we pow wow’d how to differentiate our SUV from all others, considering we were about the last to market with one, someone said ‘roll it over’ – so we did. I watched one test, at 35 mph it rolled 3.25 times, what noise.
Amazing how much noise it made, kind of gave everyone goose bumps watching it roll.
Only had one glass crack and aside from being really beat up, the doors remained closed and we could open them up. Actually the only real damage was when the fork lift tried to roll it back on all tires, it punched holes in the doors. So where am I going with this?
James just came back from Mudfest. Held annually up in Seattle, Washington by the Northwestern Automotive Press Association, this event determines who has what it takes to tackle…you guessed it MUD. This year, lots of mud was on hand. Anyway, James called from the SFO airport, waiting for his connection flight home. I could tell he was bummed out, “It’s an old SUV, still looks good but there was so many more newer designed models…we’ll never win.” Told him to go buy a loaf of sourdough bread and get on his flight home. We know technically it’s built tough, it’ll go just about anywhere, it’s all about Volvoness, but knowing journalists, they like the ‘whats new SUV’ factor and, well XC90 is not whats new.
James wrote this press release:
Volvo XC90 still impressive after all these years
2011 XC90 takes top honors in its class at annual NWAPA Mudfest
Irvine, CA (April 4, 2011)- The Volvo XC90 has been awarded yet another accolade at the annual Northwest Automotive Press Association (NWAPA) Mudfest. Already a two-time defending SUV of the Year champion (2002 and 2003), the Volvo XC90 was named best Luxury SUV by the group at its recently held 2011 event.
Up against stiff competition from BMW (X3), Infiniti (QX56), Mercedes-Benz (R350 BlueTEC 4 MATIC), and Land Rover (Range Rover Sport), the XC90 3.2 AWD R-Design impressed the Mudfest jurors with its tremendous value, sporty good looks and seating for seven.
“It’s great to see such a grizzled veteran of the Mudfest competition still considered relevant today,” said Doug Speck, President and CEO of Volvo Cars of North America. “To go up against competitors, some of which weren’t around when the XC90 went on sale in 2002, and still walk away with a category win illustrates why the XC90 remains one of our top sellers. I couldn’t be happier.”
This year, Mudfest was held at the DirtFish Rally School in Snoqualmie, Washington. Twenty six of the leading automotive journalists from the Northwest drove and evaluated 20 different 2011 SUVs and crossovers during the competition.
The Pacific Northwest is true SUV territory and remains one of the nation’s top sales markets for the entire line of Volvo’s XC vehicles. During the one-day event, the XC90 was tested vigorously both on- and off-road. Pavement tests allowed the jurors to once again experience Roll Stability Control, the world-first anti-rollover safety system introduced in the XC90. Today, such systems are mandated by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) for SUVs and similar vehicles. Off-road, the XC90 shined with its advanced Instant Traction all-wheel-drive system, which places power to the wheel with the most traction.
I’d say it’s a timeless design.
Have a great week.
dan
Posted in Awards, news, safety, Volvo History, XC90 | 1 Comment »The day crime dropped 90% in Sweden
Shown are 1973 144′s (thin bumper and door handles recessed) decked out in Police trim ready for delivery outside, I think, our Torslanda factory. I suspect all the shady characters in Sweden were running in fear when Gothenborgs Posten ran this photo. Thanks Ulf for letting us run this photo.
UPDATE: Irv Gordon on History Channel/Nova January 26
UPDATE: Irv’s PBS special has aired, and I’ve never seen Irv look so good. Amazing what HD did for him!
Irv … you looked marvelous. ‘Never means NEVER’ for anyone asking, even Duane.
Through chuckles, Irv told me: “When the engine rebuild was finished, I went Duane’s shop to pick it up and it wouldn’t start. Duane adjusted the points and that worked. I drove it on the first test drive.”
I asked him some years back to let me driver it …you know how a Labrador twists his head when give a command he doesn’t understand, well, that’s what Irv did to me. Now you understand – “Never!”
Watch the full episode. See more NOVA scienceNOW.
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Irv just sent this over. For those who don’t know Irv Gordon, he has nearly 3 million miles on his 1966 Volvo P1800.
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I will be on a PBS station that carries NOVA…here in NY it will be channel 13 and channel 47 (History Channel) on my cable system. The broadcast is at 8:00PM…but you will have to check for NOVA on your system. The date is Jan 26.
I hope it won’t be anything embarrassing! LOL
Irv
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So lets boost Nielson ratings for Nova – at least for the evening of Wednesday, Jan. 26. PBS interviewed Irv while he drove a Nova crew around Long Island last year. Should be fun to watch.
dan
Posted in Irv Gordon, news, Volvo History | 5 Comments »Irv Gordon (2.850 million miles on his Volvo) makes PBS Nova
I can tell you, Irv gets more interview coverage than just about anyone here at Volvo. I know he does at least two interviews a week with TV, print, or radio. He and his Volvo will, in couple of years, reach 3 million miles. He probably knows every good food stop in America.
Don’t miss this special feature, “Can My Car Live Forever?” airing January 26, 2011 on PBS.
“Irv Gordon, a retired science teacher from East Patchogue, New York, has managed to keep his 1966 Volvo P1800 going for four decades and over 2.7 million miles. How has he managed it, and can this recipe for longevity help the human body go the extra mile? Neil deGrasse Tyson visits Irv and takes a spin in his one-of-a-kind car.”
Posted in Irv Gordon, news, Quality of Life, Volvo History | Comments OffOur first Open House since 1998 (I stand corrected since 2000)
Amazing how the years just blow by. Friends who work here now have sons and daughters working here, new cars have been launched, people change positions. So many things are different. But not our Open House.
Around nine months ago, Doug Speck, our CEO, told us it’s time to do one again. Working with Volvo Sports America (VSA) and Volvo Club of America (VCOA), we had one heck of a successful event. In all, about 370 club members showed up, putting 774 miles on our demo cars, testing City Safety with our XC60, trying Pedestrian Detection with Full Auto Brake (still haven’t gotten used to all those words) with our S60, drooling over our classic car collection, and having lunch served by VCNA employees.
Beside these loyal owners, what makes me proud are the 70 employees who gave up a Saturday to staff and support what needed to get done.
Owners who love their Volvos, employees who love their work. Nice combination.
Have a great weekend,
Dan
Update: 10/30/2010.
Seems Dave is onto something. He wrote that unless his eyes are playing tricks, he has a dash plaque with “REVOLVOLUTION”, “Open House 10th Anniversary”, “October 28th 2000″, “Rockleigh, NJ” and “Volvo for life”. Revolvolution was about launching our S60 back in 2000. Seems absolutely no one here remembered that event. And to think we launched our new S60 with this Open House. Someone is looking over our shoulders. Thanks Dave!
Parking crew at 6:45 a.m.
Brett and wife Carrie Ann from Colorado and Gretchen Adam (VCOA).
Staffers between Volvo C70 and P1900 (number 34).
R-Sport jackets.
Doug Speck addresses early morning group.
Briefings on product planning, overseas delivery and VDIS service tool.
Lunch prep by VCNA staffers.
Lunch time!
Raffle winner takes home a C70 (of course!).
Volvo.
