Instroduction
Volvo Cars, or Volvo Personvagnar, is a well-known Swedish luxury automobile maker founded in 1927 in the city of Gothenburg in Sweden.


Volvo was formed as a subsidiary company to the ball bearing maker SKF. It was not until 1935 when Volvo AB was introduced on the Swedish stock exchange that SKF sold most of the shares in the company. Volvo Cars was owned by AB Volvo until 1999, when it was acquired by the Ford Motor Company and placed in its Premier Automotive Group along with Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin. Volvo is a premium manufacturer and produces luxury models ranging from SUVs, wagons, and sedans to compact executive sedans and coupes. It competes directly with manufacturers such as Acura, Alfa Romeo, Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Infiniti, Lancia, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Saab. With 2,500 dealerships worldwide in 100 markets; 60 percent of sales come from Europe, 30 percent from North America, and the other 10 percent is from the rest of the world. Volvo's marketshare is shrinking in the North American market. On the contrary, Volvo increases its marketshare in new markets such as Russia, China and India. Specifically, Volvo expected sales in Russia to double and exceed 20,000 units by the end of 2007, making Russia one of the ten biggest markets for the company.


Safety
Volvo cars have always evoked a reputation for solidity and reliability. In 1944, laminated glass was introduced in the PV model. In 1958, Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin invented and patented the modern 3-Point Safety Belt, which became standard on all Volvo cars in 1959.[13] Volvo was the first company to produce cars with padded dashboards starting in late 1956 with their Amazon model.[citation needed] Additionally, Volvo developed the first rear-facing child seat in 1964[14] and introduced its own booster seat in 1978. In 1986, Volvo introduced the first central high-mounted stoplight[16] (a brake light not shared with the rear tail lights), which became federally mandated in the United States in the 1986 model year. Seat belt and child seat innovation continued as shown in the 1991 960. The 960 introduced the first three-point seat belt for the middle of the rear seat and a child safety cushion integrated in the middle armrest. Also in 1991 came the introduction of the Side Impact Protection System (SIPS) on the 940/960 and 850 models, which channeled the force of a side impact away from the doors and into the safety cage. To add to its SIPS in 1995 Volvo was the first to introduce side airbags and installed them as standard equipment in all models in 1995. In 1998 Volvo also developed and was the first to install a head protecting airbag, which was made standard in all new models as well as some existing models. The head-protecting airbag was not available on the 1996 C70 due to the initial design deploying the airbag from the roof; the C70, being a convertible, could not accommodate such an airbag. Later years of the C70 featured a head-protecting airbag deploying upwards from the door, negating the issue of roof position. It has been stated by many testing authorities that side head protecting curtain airbags can reduce risk of death in a side impact by up to 40% and brain injury by up to 55%, as well as protecting in a rollover situation.[19] In 1998, Volvo introduced its Whiplash Protection System (WHIPS), a safety device to prevent injury of front seat users during collisions.[20] In 2004, Volvo introduced the BLIS system, which detects vehicles entering the Volvo's blind spot with a side view mirror mounted sensor and alerts the driver with a light. That year also saw Volvos sold in all markets equipped with side-marker lights and daytime-running lights (the latter having already been available in many markets for some time). Much of Volvo's safety technology now also goes into other Ford vehicles.