1982 Volvo 740 Safety Promotional Video

‘Safety doesn’t sell cars’ was long an unwritten rule of the automobile marketing.
In the early 1970s, designers began to pay more attention to safety in the cockpit, reducing the lethal areas against which a driver or passenger could be bruised or impaled. Features such as deep dished steering wheels, energy absorbing steering columns and padded dashboards began to appear. Externally, dangerous pedestrian threatening mascots were eliminated. The 1970s also saw a number of ESV cars (Experimental Safety Vehicles), including Volvo’s ESC (VESC) form 1972. The most striking things about such safety cars were their big bumpers, mounted on telescopic shock absorbers to take the first blow of a collision.

At the beginning of the 70s safety was not a selling argument used by many makers. But there were exceptions like Volvo. With stories in their ads telling stories about safety-consciousness among Swedish motorists, asserting that Volvo’s a part of this movement. Touting often, as being of the first for features such as dual braking systems, and four wheel disc brakes, three point safety belts, laminated windshields and many others. I would say, that what we know about anything automotive and safety related, can probably be associated to Volvo and their pursuit for producing the safest cars on the planet. And the footage in this video, provided to me by my friend Dan Roth at Autoblog is proof of that.