The Volvo Company was born on April 14, 1927 with the roll out of the ÖV4, nicknamed Jakob, from the factory floor in Gothenburg. However, the road to the company's existence and building quality cars began in 1923. In the 1920 circa, before the birth of Volvo Company, car makers built cars by choosing ready-made parts from catalog and then assembling into cars. The results were of poor quality products. Eventually many of the early car makers seized to exist. Volvo had a different philosophy: they believed quality cars could only be built from designing components in-house, contracting the designs to be built by manufacturers and finally assembling the parts by experienced car builders. And that, the desire to build quality cars, was the driving force behind Volvo.

The task of creating the company was divided up between two figures: Assar Gabrielsson and Gustaf Larson. Gabrielsson, a businessman, headed the financial side of the company while Larson, an engineer and designer, headed the product research and development side of the venture. They had come to know each other while working at SKF, a ball bearing manufacturer in Gothenburg. Perhaps it was at SKF that they got the notion of building cars of their own. Their notion became a reality in September 1924, when the design work was commenced.

Money has always been a hurdle in developing a new project and this project was no exception. It was Gabrielsson's job to get the money for research and development. However, nobody would finance the project without any concrete evidence that their investment would be returned. What Gabrielsson and Larson did was produce ten test vehicles, nine convertibles and one hard top. Who Gabrielsson found to finance the project was, naturally, SKF. SKF provided guarantee and credit to initial 1000 cars, 500 convertibles and 500 hard tops. In addition to the above, SKF would also allocate facilities to build the cars and name the new found company AB Volvo.

With the first ÖV4 rolling out the factory floor on April 14, 1927, Volvo's existence was officially recognized. The rest, as they say, is history.

Naturally, one would ask what does the name mean. The word,Volvo, is Latin which means "I roll". Combined that with the circle and arrow (alchemist's symbol for iron), the infamous logo means rolling strength.

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If you are interested in learning more about the history of Volvo, go to their home page at http://www.volvo.se.

Source: http://www.car.volvo.se/businessinfo/history/

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