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Volvo Lundby factory in 1927.
Same car, same location in 2012.
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Eighty five years of Volvo Cars
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18th April, 2012
On 14th April 1927, the first mass-produced Volvo car rolled off the
production line at the Lundby factory in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Now, 85 years later, the Volvo Car Corporation sells cars in 120 countries, while the Volvo Group is one of the
world's largest manufacturers of commercial vehicles.
At 10am on 14th April 1927, sales manager Hilmer Johansson drove the first mass-produced ÖV4 model through the factory
gates – 85 years on, the same model passed through the same gates to celebrate this historic milestone.
Stefan Jacoby, President and CEO of Volvo Car Corporation, and Olof Persson, President and CEO of the Volvo Group,
were behind the wheel.
"It's a fantastic car, but it's easy to see how much has changed over the last 85 years," says Stefan Jacoby,
who revealed the all-new V40 at the Geneva Motor Show last month.
The Volvo Group and Volvo Car Corporation are two companies with a long shared history. However, what was once one
company began as an unpromising project because Volvo's founders, Assar Gabrielsson and Gustaf Larson, had no direct
experience of cars or the automotive industry.
During its first year of production Volvo sold a modest 300 cars but the following year business began to take off,
and even back then Volvo accepted that the key to success lay in exports.
Today, with 21,500 employees worldwide, around 87 per cent of all Volvo Car Corporation's sales take place outside
Sweden. Last year, the Volvo Car Corporation sold around 450,000 cars, with the USA as its single largest market.
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