WORLD OF VOLVO

We make a trip to Sweden to visit Volvo's new museum and experience centre in Gothenberg

- Tom Jervis

CAR brands like to be seen as a lot more than just purveyors of shiny metal nowadays. If you succumb to all the marketing materials, you'll see Ford as a representation of the birth of mass production in the automotive industry, Volkswagen as a showcase for Germany's progression from a totalitarian dictatorship to a democratic social market economy and Ferrari as the embodiment of luxury, passion and performance.

Volvo, on the other hand, likes to see itself as the brand of car safety, and this is what it's trying to convey in the new World of Volvo museum, which opened its doors earlier this year in the heart of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Of course, this assertion isn't without any precedent; Volvo has long been at the forefront of car-safety development. For example, the brand was the first to offer a traditional threepoint seatbelt way back in 1959 - a fact it still proudly displays on the tongue of its cars' belts to this day. In the early nineties, Volvo also introduced its Side Impact Protection System (SIPS), a reinforced side crash structure that was eventually bolstered by the world's first side-impact airbags. The brand's innovations have continued into the digital age of driverassistance tech, too, with the 2008 Volvo XC60 being the first new car sold with autonomous emergency braking - something that's now mandatory on all new cars sold in the UK.

The museum is a technological marvel itself; four years in the making, World of Volvo spans a colossal 22,000sqm. The building centres around three 34-metre-high wooden tree trunk-like structures, which branch out at the top to support the vast ceiling and walls of glass. It's a space built on the Swedish concept of allemansrätt, which means every person has a right to access nature. The architects have described the trio of 'trees' as featuring a "forest-like canopy" - a remark we initially rolled our eyes at until we realised that atop the entire building sits an impressive rooftop garden.