Past and present meet at the refurbished Volvo museum

The Volvo Museum in Gothenburg, which is run jointly by AB Volvo and Volvo Car Corporation, recently re-opened after being extensively refurbished and extended since its original opening 13 years ago.

Visitors are now welcomed by a new façade made entirely of glass, but once inside they are struck by the contrast between the old and the new. The latest acquisition - a gigantic Volvo VN780 built in Virginia, USA, - stands side-by-side with the very first Volvo truck, the LV40, which rolled out of the plant in 1928.

Last year, the museum attracted almost 52,000 visitors, around 60 per cent of whom came from outside Sweden. “As this museum can only be described as a jewel in Volvo’s crown, we are now hoping to welcome many more visitors,” says Sten-Åke Lyngstam, the museum curator for the past year.

Following its refurbishment, the museum now has a cafeteria, gift shop and even the opportunity to hold a conference in one of the newly equipped lecture rooms.

“This is a valuable way of boosting the brand, especially as these days far more attention is being focused on history than ever before,” says Sten-Åke Lyngstam.

In was back in 1995 that Heinz Linninger, the previous curator, finally succeeded in bringing together all the valuable objects that had previously be spread about in barns, hangars and various other storage areas and gathering them under one roof. With the company’s help, he had spent many years purchasing old Volvo products with the dream of one day being able to display them at a Volvo Museum.

That dream has now been fully realised as the extended museum offers its visitors an exciting journey through the company’s 80 years of existence from 1927 to the present day. In fact the museum now contains more than 100 examples of all the Volvo products – trucks, buses, construction equipment, boat engines, aircraft engines and cars, as well as concept vehicles that never made it into production.

The idea is that the museum should support the various companies’ business operations and brands by acting as a cohesive, common meeting place. Indeed, visitors to the museum include the companies’ customers, the media, representatives from the authorities, schools and universities, employees and tourists.