Volvo was born on April 14, 1927, when the first car, ÖV4
(nicknamed Jakob) left the factory in Gothenburg. The 1920's was
the decade when cars made a real breakthrough, both in the USA
and Europe. In Sweden, people's interest in cars was seriously
aroused in 1923 as the result of a jubilee exhibition in
Gothenburg attended by 97 car exhibitors. Older models were
often compared to tractors, partly because Volvo AB was and
still is a manufacturer of heavy equipment, earlier Bolinder-
Munktell, now Volvo Construction Equipment. Considered by some
to be slow and heavy, they earned the distinction "brick" as a
term of endearment for the classic, block-shaped Volvo, with the
more powerful turbo charged variants known as "turbobricks".
Quality was of paramount importance to the men who founded
Volvo.This basic concept, which was formulated back in 1926,
still applies to Volvo's way of making cars.The US traffic
safety administration (NHTSA) purchased a number of Volvo 240's,
which were used to set the safety standar