spent my first fifty-eight years living in Sweden full-time, much of it in Gothenburg. On graduating from the University of Lund in 1959, I married my college sweetheart Christina Engellau, who had also grown up in Gothenburg and was the daughter of Volvo chairman Gunnar Engellau. I got a job at the Amphion Insurance Company in Gothenburg and remained there for several years before my father asked me to join him at the Skandia Insurance Company in Stockholm. I ultimately succeeded him as CEO of the company.
My father’s request surprised me. He had never been of the belief that executives should promote the employment of their own family members—in fact he was very resistant to the idea. But the company chairman asked him directly about the prospect of bringing me on board, and he ultimately agreed and offered me a starting position as an assistant administrative manager. The job involved our family moving from Gothenburg to Stockholm, a prospect that Christina was enthusiastic about, since it would allow her to achieve a little distance from her family. I remember her father reacting to the news of my joining Skandia by saying, “I would never engage anyone at Volvo who is related to me.”
I was baffled, therefore, when just eighteen months later my father-in-law (by way of his then chairman of the board) approached me and asked to have a conversation about the possibility of my going to work at Volvo. I could not help but think that the job would be truly fascinating. What possible reason could I have for saying no? The only person who mattered to me with an objection was my wife. Christina loved living our independent life in Stockholm, and she was now facing the possibility that the man she had married was a de facto crown prince, positioned as her father’s successor, which meant moving back to Gothenburg. I knew it was not what Christina wanted, but she put on a brave face and agreed that I take the job at Volvo, and that we and our four children would leave Stockholm.
There were a few articles written at the time, making reference to my employment and family connections at Skandia and Volvo, and suggesting those connections as the reason for hiring me at Volvo, but as none were able to back up those insinuations with factual reports to demonstrate that my professional skills and competence were insufficient, that sort of chatter died away quickly. My new colleagues at Volvo also overcame their surprise, as I was considerably younger than the average top man at any company—and they easily adjusted to my new position. From the very first, I loved both the job and the company. I found it challenging and exciting in the best of ways. I was tough with management—and while I had no desire to do a symbolic house-clearing, I did replace those I felt inadequate for the job, and worked closely with those who had potential, trying to make them real partners in the company.
It could be said that I started my career at Volvo with a bang. More specifically, a car accident. One night, fairly soon after I joined the company, the heating system in the little house that Christina and I had just moved our family into would not turn on. I worked late into the night trying unsuccessfully to fix it and rose the next morning having gotten only two or three hours of sleep. I was scheduled to give a presentation early in the morning. Groggy and running late, I was driving much faster than I should have been, and overshooting a turn I ran straight into a lamppost. The impact was so severe that the engine of the car came through the dashboard. The car was obviously totaled, which in that moment was only distressing to me because I was now late for the meeting and still a short distance from the Volvo headquarters. So I walked the rest of the way to the office building and up to the conference room where the meeting was already underway. I opened the door and strode in, and every person in the room turned to stare at me. At that point, I realized that I had blood all over my shirt. I’m sure I made for a fascinating sight, but no one asked me any questions at all. And I offered no explanation. It was very bizarre. I simply launched into the beginning of my presentation, and about an hour into it, I was interrupted by a knock on the door. Someone opened it, and there was a policeman, scrutinizing all of the executives that were seated around the table.
“I’m looking for a Mr. Gyllenhammar,” the policeman said. “Is he here?”
I could hardly say that no, he was not.
“I am Mr. Gyllenhammar,” I said, from where I was still standing at the front of the conference room, bloody shirt and all. Ultimately, I was prosecuted for leaving the scene of an accident and had to make a court appearance. They asked me to describe the accident and explain why I left, which I did, with the only qualifying detail being my determination to get to my meeting and give my presentation. I was given a rather large fine to pay, and that was that. But what is most memorable to me still is that when I walked into the courtroom, there was a class of local schoolchildren there, sitting in on some proceedings in order to learn how the justice system worked in action. When I walked through the door, one of the children said, “There he is, there is Mr. Gyllenhammar.” And all of the little faces turned to stare at me. It was certainly an unforgettable experience for me, and not quite the first impression I wished to make with my Volvo colleagues or the youth of Gothenburg. Whether the children found it equally memorable is debatable.
I vividly remember going down to the Volvo plant for the first time to visit and talk to the workers. It was only very rarely that the workers saw a CEO or top management walking the factory floor, and in those occurrences the executive would be more ingratiating than businesslike, dressed down in something deemed sufficiently casual for the workers’ sensibilities. I arrived on the factory floor still in my suit and tie and addressed them directly, with questions to which I genuinely wanted to know the answers—I was asking them to share knowledge and expertise that I knew only they had. My approach seemed to resonate with the workers, because they welcomed me with surprise and genuine warmth. Over the years, my visits to the factory floor were among the parts of my job I most looked forward to.
By some accounts the genesis of Sweden’s automotive future was conceived in 1924 over a large dish of red crayfish at a popular Stockholm restaurant. It was there that Assar Gabrielsson—sales manager for the SFK industrial company—and SFK engineer Gustaf Larson—happened to run into one another. They jointly tucked into the crustaceans—which had been boiled in beer and seasoned with fresh dill—eating them cold from the shell. During the course of that meal the conversation turned to cars, namely the 15,000 vehicles being imported into Sweden annually. Was it not possible to produce cars locally, they wondered? As Gabrielsson would later write, “Swedish steel was good, but Swedish roads were bad.” The two began discussing the possibility of designing and building a quintessentially Swedish automobile, designed to safely withstand the rigors of northern European winters and Swedish roads, and constructed to the highest standards of quality and safety. Three years later, in April of 1927, the first Volvo car rolled out of the Lundby factory gates—the ÖV 4, nicknamed Jakob. The ÖV 4 (short for Öppen Vagn 4 cylindrar) was an open four-seater with a four-cylinder engine, with leather upholstery, and a deep blue chassis with black fenders atop twenty-inch wheels with wooden spokes.
On the fiftieth anniversary of Jakob’s arrival on the scene, we published a Volvo Jubilee historical booklet that celebrated the history of what Volvo had accomplished in the last half century. It opened with a brief essay on the ÖV 4 that began, “It’s 1927, a year of superlatives. Lindbergh flies the Atlantic…movies talk… Babe Ruth hits 60 home runs. A year of automobiles, too. Ford is phasing out the Model T… names like Packard, Willys-Overland, Reo, Pierce-Arrow, Stutz, Auburn are all strong in the American market. There’s a worldwide fascination with automobiles. In Sweden, a new name enters the field…Volvo. A 4-cylinder open touring car called Jakob, begins what is to become the outstanding example of constant progress through evolution in the automotive industry.”
The war years were difficult for Volvo, but the company rebounded, and by the 1960s was boasting healthy car sales and exports, and producing trucks and buses, as well as jet turbines for the Swedish Air Force. When I arrived, I found the company to be in very good shape. It was 1970, a year before the recession, and four years before the oil crisis that would impact the auto industry all over the world. The company’s financials were more than sound, and in all respects Volvo had prospered in over two decades under the guidance of my father-in-law, Gunnar
