VOLVO CARS MODELS AND IMAGES

Volvo Cars, or Volvo Personvagnar AB, is a Swedish automobile manufacturer founded in 1927 in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden, and currently owned by Ford Motor Company.Volvo was originally 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 as part of its Premier Automotive Group.

Volvo produces models ranging from SUVs, wagons, and sedans to compact executive sedans and coupes. 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 market share is shrinking in the North American market. However, Volvo increased its market share 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. Volvo already boasts the leading position in Russia's luxury car segment.Older models were often compared to tractors, partly because Volvo AB was and still is a manufacturer of heavy equipment, earlier Bolinder-Munktell, now Volvo Construction Equipment. Considered by some to be slow and heavy, they earned the distinction "brick" as a term of endearment for the classic, block-shaped Volvo, with the more powerful turbo charged variants known as "turbobricks".[5] More recent models have moved away from the boxy styles favored in the 1970s and 1980s and built a reputation for sporting performance, but not before the phenomenal success of factory-supported Volvo 240 turbos winning both the 1985 European Touring Car Championship (ETC) and 1986 Australian Touring Car Championship (ATCC).Owners are often proud of achieving prodigious mileages with one well-documented 1966 Volvo P1800S having been driven over 2.6 million miles. According to some figures the average age of a Volvo being discarded is 19.8 years, second only to Mercedes.Reliability is considered better than average and in the USA Volvo dealers are listed by Forbes as the 9th best general car manufacturer and 6th best for luxury cars.

Current models

Today, the company uses a system of letters denoting body style followed by the series number. S stands for saloon or sedan, C stands for coupé or convertible and V stands for versatile as in estate car. XC stands for cross country originally added to a more rugged V70 model as the V70XC and indicates all wheel drive paired with a raised suspension to give it a mock SUV look. Volvo would later change the name to the XC70 in keeping with its car naming consistent with the XC90. So a V50 is an estate ("V") that is smaller than the V70.

Originally, Volvo was planning a different naming scheme. S and C were to be the same, but "F", standing for flexibility, was to be used on station wagons. When Volvo introduced the first generation S40 and V40 at Frankfurt in 1994, they were announced as the S4 and F4. However, Audi complained that it had inherent rights to the S4 name, since it names its sporty vehicles "S", and the yet-introduced sport version of the Audi A4 would have the S4 name. Volvo agreed to add a second digit, so the vehicles became the S40 and F40. However, that led to a complaint from Ferrari, who used the Ferrari F40 name on their legendary sports car. This led to Volvo switching the "F" to "V", for versatile.
1998 Volvo V70 wagon

* Pre-Ford
o Volvo S/V40 (M/Y 1996–2004)
o Volvo S/V70 (M/Y 1997–2000)
o Volvo C70 (M/Y 1997–2005)
o S/V90 (M/Y 1991–1998)
* Small cars (Volvo P1 platform)
o Volvo C30 (M/Y 2007- )
o Volvo C70 (M/Y 2005- )
o Volvo S40 (M/Y 2004- )
o Volvo V50 (M/Y 2004- )
* Large cars (Volvo P2 platform)
o Volvo S60 (M/Y 2001- )
o Volvo S80 (M/Y 1999–2006)
o Volvo V70 (M/Y 2000–2007)
o Volvo XC70 (M/Y 2001–2007)
o Volvo XC90 (M/Y 2003- )
* Large Cars (Volvo Y2 platform)
o Volvo S80 (M/Y 2007- )
o Volvo V70 (M/Y 2008- )
o Volvo XC60 (M/Y 2009- )
o Volvo XC70 (M/Y 2008- )

Concept cars

* Volvo Venus Bilo (1933)
* Volvo Philip (1952)
* Volvo Margarete Rose (1953)
* Volvo Elisabeth I (1953)
* Volvo VESC (1972)
* Volvo 1800 ESC (1972)
* Volvo EC (1977)
* Volvo City Taxi (1977)
* Volvo Tundra (1979)
* Volvo VCC (1980)
* Volvo LCP2000 (1983)
* Volvo ECC (1992)
* Volvo SCC (2001)
* Volvo YCC (2004)
* Volvo T6 (2005)
* Volvo XC60 (2006)(now being produced)