This is a joke. The author is responsible for the opinions expressed in the text.
My colleague’s curious gaze met mine in the editorial office. It was the other day. Volvo presented its new electric SUV. They eagerly responded to their colleague’s words: “During the record years, Volvo’s new car models were just as big news as they were when the Social Democrats changed party leadership.”
The words stuck.
The record years. Then the Social Democrats gathered half of the Swedish voters – and changed the party leader every twenty years. Volvo also dominated car sales and changed its car models at the same pace.
The changes led to Sweden quitting, as did Ingemar Stenmark’s televised slalom race.
Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson shaped the concept of the people’s houses. When he retired and died in 1946 after twenty-one years as party leader, he not only moved on to his successor, Tage Erlander, but also to the first major success of the people’s home construction: the Volvo PV 444. The small car with a cow’s back would keep up for another twenty-two years. Per Albin’s successor Tage Erlander in the twenty-third year.
Per Albin happened to be at the premiere of PV at the Royal Tennis Hall in 1944, along with Crown Prince Gustaf VI. Adolf and four other ministers.
All Sweden was in power.
And for ten days, an unimaginable 148,437 Swedes saw the new “Little Volvo” – which was quickly adopted by Folkhems-Swedes.
First in line was a family with small children in a three-room apartment in the Stockholm suburb of Alby. Tage and Aina Erlander came across a dove-gray PV 444 in the summer of 1950. A special version with red-gray striped seat fabric.
Every morning for almost two decades The Prime Minister sank into the passenger seat. Ms. Aina drove. She dropped him off at the old office building before heading off to work as a teacher at Södra Flickklaroverket on Bohusgatan.
Tage Erlander, who never received a driver’s license, was party chairman for 23 years. Of course he switched to the PV successor – the Volvo Amazon. A Californian. The family’s second and last car.
Today, party leaders and car models are changed in lockstep with underwear. And Volvo Cars is almost 80 percent owned by a Chinese company. Although the new electric Volvo was developed and built in Gothenburg, the small EX30 electric car was developed and built in China in its early years. And future electric Volvo cars will be manufactured in Slovakia.
Today we ask ourselves most: What sharp turns are the global winds taking today?
Read other home series, for example n’Jonas about an old freezer that never stops working.
