Pub quiz whiz, car fan or just a general know-it-all? You might get a kick out of our Quick Car Pub Facts series.
This time we’ve got a rapid-fire run down of some of the wackiest facts about Volvos to amaze, or annoy, your mates down the boozer with.
The highest mileage ever recorded on a car is on a Volvo
The highest-ever recorded mileage on a car is on a Volvo P1800, which has more than three million miles on its clock after it was bought by owner Irv Gordon all the way back in 1966.
Volvo actually also has a special high mileage club: 150,000 miles will get you a bronze membership, 300,000 will earn you silver and you’ll have to rack up 500,000 miles to be a gold member.
Anybody who successfully gets into the high mileage club car order a special badge so you can share your car’s achievement with the world. Needless to say, it speaks volumes about the durability of Volvo’s cars.
Volvos are built to withstand earthquakes
Speaking of durability, Volvo cars are engineered on special machines that were originally intended to assess how buildings withstand earthquakes.
Volvo modified them instead to help test the durability and toughness of its cars in crash scenarios, and conducts a total of 450 tests per year, often taking up to 10 days to fully prepare for the assessments.
Volvo invented the seatbelt
The modern three-point seatbelt was actually invented by Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin in 1958, and was introduced as standard on all Volvo cars a year later.
Bohlin had previously worked designing aircraft ejector seats and realised that the old lap belts that used to come as standard in cars were just as likely to kill you as they were to save you.
Interestingly, Bohlin and Volvo refused to patent the invention, believing that saving peoples’ lives was more important than profit.
The Volvo logo is an ancient chemical symbol
Although it looks like the male symbol pendant that Austin Powers wears around his neck, the Volvo logo is actually a chemical symbol for iron that dates back to Roman times.
The Romans originally used the symbol to represent Mars, the god of warfare. Iron was an essential material in warfare at the time, and so it came to represent the metal, as well the gender symbol for males.
To Volvo, the symbol is synonymous the with durability, safety and strength which typifies all of its cars, and Sweden is also famed for its high-quality iron.
People love to write songs about Volvos
The most sung about car in the world is probably the Ford Mustang, but believe it or not there are countless hit songs out there written specifically about Volvo cars.
Just some include ‘The Volvo Song’ by Marian Call, Grynch’s ‘My Volvo’, ‘Volvo’ by Eddie Meduza and Everclear’s ‘Volvo Driving Soccer Mom’.
Hilariously, Chevrolet once released an advertisement for the Corvette which read “They don’t write songs about Volvo”. Awkward…