Owned by the Chinese Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, Volvo Car Corporation is a Swedish automobile manufacturer founded in 1927, in Gothenburg.
Volvo was originally formed as a subsidiary company to the ball bearing maker SKF. SKF sold the majority of the shares in the company in 1935, when Volvo was introduced on the Swedish stock exchange. Volvo Cars was then owned by AB Volvo until 1999, when it was acquired by the Ford Motor Company as part of its Premier Automotive Group. Geely Holding Group then acquired Volvo from Ford in 2010.
Volvo Cars' largest markets are the United States, Sweden, China, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Belgium and have almost 2,500 local dealerships in 100 countries worldwide.
Volvo has a great reputation for safety and reliability, and has innovated a number of safety features in its time, including air bag innovations, Roll Stability Control, and it was the first company to have a system capable of sensing a rollover in progress, and acting to forestall it. Most importantly however, Volvo were the first producers of the in-car seat belt. They deliberately did not patent the design however, because they knew the safety implications of every car having a seat belt would be huge and worth the potential loss in revenue.