Volvo has a reputation for building some of the safest automobiles in the world, and it got that reputation the old-fashioned way–it earned it.
The company’s commitment has helped make Volvo’s name synonymous with automotive safety, note officials of Ford Motor Co., which in January agreed to pay $6.5 billion to acquire the Volvo passenger-car business.
“We value the heritage of Volvo. We’ll keep the research and development in Sweden. We think that’s part of the heritage. Volvo stands for safety,” said Jac Nasser, Ford’s chief executive, after announcing the acquisition this year.
From the time Volvo was organized in 1927 until today, one of its primary objectives has been to build the safest cars possible. And that has been incorporated into the company’s mission statement, said Volvo spokeswoman Jeannine Fallon.
Volvo’s pre-eminence, however, is under challenge from a full-range of competitors including BMW, DaimlerChrysler’s Mercedes-Benz unit, as well as giants such as Toyota Motor Co. and General Motors Corp., which have made major investments in improving safety technology.
Fallon says Volvo recognizes that it’s facing increasingly fierce competition from rival carmakers who are putting more safety features on their vehicles and aggressively marketing them.
Volvo’s secret weapon, however, is its passion for building safer cars, she argues.
“This is something that’s ingrained in the company. We’ve never done it for marketing reasons. There is a philosophy of caring for people that’s part of Scandinavian culture. We’re always looking for ways to make our cars safer. Every new model we bring out is safer than the model it replaces. This is very much part of our philosophy,” Fallon says.
And outside observers maintain that anyone trying to take the safety lead from Volvo is in for a knock-down fight.
“It goes beyond air bags. They’re built like tanks,” said Mary Anne Keller, an analyst with Furman Selz in New York, who added that the Volvo name is one of the industry’s strongest.
Thus, Volvo enters the contest with an advantage that a lot of its competitors are reluctant to challenge head on, she notes. BMW, for example, markets active safety–the quality of its brakes and handling–as part of its performance image, Keller notes.
Volvo has shown it has a knack for integrating the latest safety technology, such as multiple air bags, into its vehicles just ahead of its competitors, said Michael Robinet, an analyst with CSM Forecasting Inc.
Before the merger with Ford, Volvo put up $100 million to build a new safety research center at its headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden. The center is scheduled to open this year. The alliance with Ford will help, said Keller, who added that Ford has demonstrated with Jaguar, which it acquired in 1989, that it has the patience to manage an independent brand.
Nasser and other Ford officials indicated they will help underwrite some of Volvo’s safety research. Volvo also should benefit from Ford’s purchasing power.
Volvo has not always had the economic muscle to protect its innovations. Suppliers would sell that technology to other companies, notes one senior Ford official who asked not to be identified. Ford, on the other hand, with multiple vehicle lines and huge global production volume, can negotiate better terms for its subsidiary, the Ford official noted.
Volvo officials say its safety engineering and research focuses on three areas:
– Active safety or features: brakes, steering and lighting that help a driver avoid accidents.
– Passive safety: seat belts, air bags and the basic structure of the vehicle.
– Protection of the vehicle itself from theft and vandalism.
Dave Cole, director of the University of Michigan Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation, said safety is at the core of the Volvo mystique. “They certainly haven’t developed a reputation for their style or performance,” he says.
The cars Volvo builds also seem to reflect the sober, conservative Swedish personality and they make sense in the inclement Scandinavia, Cole adds.
James Hall, an analyst with AutoPacific in Detroit, says Volvo also takes a novel approach to engineering a vehicle. Most carmakers start with the packaging and performance and then build in the safety. Volvo starts with the safety envelope–features that are supposed to protect the occupants–and fits in packaging and performance, says Hall.
Mercedes-Benz is another company that focuses heavily on safety early on in the design phase. The subtle distinction is that Mercedes does it as one step in building a premium luxury car while Volvo has focused on drivers and passengers since the company was organized in the 1920s.
“Cars are driven by people. The guiding principle behind everything we make at Volvo, therefore, is–and must remain–safety,” said Assar Gabrielsson, a founder, more than 72 years ago.
The basic philosophy is backed up by rigorous research that tests the design carefully and keeps track of how the design works in the field, which is used as the basis for improvements and adjustments, Volvo officials add.
The payoff, they add, is cars that have gotten steadily safer, even in an increasingly tougher traffic environment.
As for the competition, GM’s engineers were pioneers in improving the designs of highways and road signs, the collapsible steering column, the first workable air-bag systems (in the 1970s) and safety cages to protect drivers; Ford experimented with padded dashboards and other safety features in the 1950s; Mercedes-Benz has steadily worked to design a structure that could protect the passenger; and Chrysler helped popularize air bags in the early 1990s.
And though Volvo pioneered side-impact air bags and curtains that deploy from the roof, BMW and Mercedes have joined in.
“There is still a lot to do in the safety area,” adds Joseph Phillippi, an analyst with Lehman Brothers in New York.
So a company such as Volvo with a strong safety research and development tradition is in a strong position to keep coming up with innovations, he adds.
New safety-related technology, such as radar-guided brakes and cruise control, is being integrated into vehicles, Phillippi adds. CSM Forecasting’s Robinet says skillful adaptation of new electronics could keep Volvo ahead of rivals.
One thing Volvo might want to avoid, she suggests, is broadening its product line to include vehicles such as sport-utility vehicles that could compromise the company’s safety image, Keller adds.
THE MAN WHO GAVE US THE THREE-POINT SEAT BELT
Nils Bohlin didn’t arrive at Volvo unheralded.
In 1958, Bohlin was wooed from Saab by Gunnar Engelau, Volvo’s president, as the automaker’s first safety engineer.
Bohlin, then in his late 30s, was responsible for the development of ejector seats, parachutes and seat belts used in the jets Saab built for the Swedish Air Force.
Within a year, Bohlin had invented and patented the three-point seat-belt that within 15 years became standard in motor vehicles all over the world.
The three-point belt has been mandatory in cars sold in the U.S. since 1972. And it has undergone only minimal modifications, such as the addition of the reel, which allows the user to move around, tensioners that eliminate the slack and simpler buckles.
“Sometimes I get a call from some grateful person who has survived thanks to the belt,” Bohlin said after being nominated in February for induction into the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn, Mich., in October.
Bohlin followed the invention with extensive studies in Scandanavia that proved the worth of the three-point belt, still considered the most effective automotive safety device. Bohlin’s studies showed the belt reduced accident-related injuries 50 to 60 percent.
In 1985, Bohlin’s three-point belt was honored by the West German patent office as one of the most important inventions in the last century with the refrigerator prototype, Thomas Edison’s electric light bulb, Carl Benz’s first car, the bottle cap, airplane and Rudolf Diesel’s compression engine.
Born in 1920 in Harnosand, Sweden, Bohlin went to work at Saab as an aircraft designer after military service. In his 16 years at Saab, Bohlin helped develop and design jet trainers and fighters.
By 1955, he had been given responsibility for the ejector seats required on new supersonic aircraft. Bohlin spent nearly 40 years at Saab and Volvo before his official retirement in 1985. Since then, he has remained a consultant on safety and engineering questions.
DEDICATION TO SAFETY
Volvo has led the industry in adapting or refining features that have become standard across the industry from its inception in 1927. Here’s a brief listing of its innovations:
1927–The first Volvos come with safety-glass windscreen as well as automatic windshield wipers.
1944–When automakers in most other countries were building war material, Volvo began building vehicles with shatter-proof laminated glass and a special safety cage to protect drivers in collisions. Laminated glass did not become a standard feature on American-made cars until 1969.
1954–The windshield defroster appears on Volvos in 1954.
1956–Windshield washers appear on all Volvos.
–Volvo installs seat belts in cars.
1959–Three-point seat belts, developed by former Saab aircraft designer Nils I. Bolin, became standard on Volvos.
1960s–Volvo proves seat belts can reduce deaths and injuries in traffic accidents. Automotive engineers had been working with seat belts since the late 1940s–after experience in World War II showed they could help reduce injuries from air crashes.
1966–Volvo introduces the rear-window defroster, crumple zones in the front and rear that absorb and dissipate crash energy and a roof roll bar.
1968–Volvo includes head restraints, another simple feature that safety experts now credit with protecting thousands of motorists from injury. Head restraints become standard on cars built in the U.S. in 1969.
1972–Child seat and child-proof locks are developed.
–Warning lights for stranded motorists and abandoned cars are introduced.
1974–Safety of fuel-tanks improved in rear-end collisions.
1976–Results of head-on crash test involving two 240S are used to set uniform safety standards for all new cars sold in the U.S.
1982–Volvo fuel tanks are moved in front of the rear-axle.
1990–Integrated child seat is installed.
1994–A new side-impact protection system is adopted.
1998–The inflatable curtain, which drops from the roof in side-impact type collision to protect the driver or passengers’ head, is introduced.
