Volvo V40 Cross Country d'occasion

Volvo was founded in Gothenburg in 1927 by Assar Gabrielsson and Gustaf Larson, who reasoned that a car built for Swedish roads and Swedish winters would have to be stronger than anything else on sale. Cars are driven by people, they wrote, so the guiding principle must always be safety.

Volvo kept that promise in the most generous way possible. In 1959 engineer Nils Bohlin invented the three-point seatbelt, and Volvo gave the patent away for free. The 240, the 850 estate that raced in the British Touring Car Championship and the XC90 that reinvented the family SUV all carried the same brick-solid values.

Under Geely ownership since 2010, Volvo has become a design-led premium brand with Scandinavian minimalism as its calling card. The EX30, EX90 and ES90 lead the electric line, the XC60 and XC90 continue as plug-in hybrids, and the goal is still the one from 1927: nobody should be seriously injured in a new Volvo.