Depending on how much of a stickler for detail you wanted to be, you could argue with your Swedish buddies that Volvo was actually started in 1915 as a subsidiary of Swedish ball bearing manufacturer AB SKF. It wasn’t until nine years later, in 1924, that Assar Gabrielsson and Gustaf Larson decided to build a car. And from there it was a long stretch to 1955 when the first Volvo car officially rolled onto an American dock.

It was that latter moment in history that Volvo celebrated Saturday night on the streets of Paramount Studios’ rented backlot in Southern California. Volvo Cars North America gathered historical and modern models in the “streets” of Paramount, but dressed its head honcho Lex Kerssemakers in fashionable 1955 garb to commemorate the anniversary.

“They delivered 26 cars that first year,” noted Kerssemakers’ from under a fedora.

That was quickly eclipsed the second year of American imports; the company sold 5000 cars to U.S. buyers in 1956, and 10,000 in 1957, Volvo’s third year of U.S. sales.

Yes, it’s true that Volvo is now owned by the slightly less-Swedish-sounding Zhejiang Geely Holding Group of China, but five years after it became Chinese it is in the process of becoming more American. Only a couple weeks ago Volvo broke ground on its South Carolina production facility, which will be cranking out S60s by 2018. That South Carolina factory will churn out 100,000 Volvos a year for North American sales, a strategy that European luxury competitors BMW and Mercedes have used to fuel their own exponential growth here. Combined with a new Scalable Product Architecture and a technologically advanced engine family funded by $11 billion in investment from Geely, Volvo should creep back up in sales from 56,000 last year to something more like its 2004 peak of 139,000 in the U.S.

All of which was burbling in the background of the carmaker’s 60th anniversary celebration Saturday, where it looked back at some of its products. On hand were several private and company owned historical cars: in addition to Volvo’s 1920s-era PV4 there was a very nice later-50s P1900 convertible that Kerssemakers drove in himself; there were plenty of P1800 coupes on hand, including the very one used in The Saint; there was a very clean PV444 and a pair of PV445 Duetts (a vehicle that just celebrated its own 60th anniversary two years ago); there were 164s and 240s galore, along with privately owend C70s, 850s and XC90s. There was something for every Volvo passenger car enthusiast of every age for the last 60 years.

And Volvo is looking further into the future while celebrating its past.

“We are celebrating the next 60 years,” said Kerssemakers, “…although that will likely be done with different people.” No one lasts forever. But Volvos come pretty close.

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