Volvo estate. Rarely has the automotive world generated such an evocative couplet. Baby Fiat; MG Roadster; VW Campervan – they’re all “things”, in the modern idiom. Not many, though. In the case of the Volvo, it summons up a whole aspirational lifestyle: part cliche, part ambitious, part to be envied, part to be despised...
Smug, built to last, driven by the upper-middle classes and, traditionally, bought and run for an average of 17 years (way beyond the norm, even in the old days), the car of choice for the progressive Social Democrat – rightly built in the social democratic paradise of Sweden, the safest thing on the road, functional, boxy and with such a capacity for bulky loads it was very much favoured in the antique trade.
