There is a World of Volvo museum in Sweden which I long to see. It was made by the architect Henning Larsen, which makes me laugh because I have been pretending to be a Scandinavian architect driving an XC90 all week long. This columnist does not know who she is, which is a good thing because the car can show me.

There is an urban myth that you cannot actually die in a Volvo, even of old age or hemlock

There is an urban myth that you cannot actually die in a Volvo, even of old age or hemlock

World of Volvo’s interior is that of a whale but wooden, as if made for some red-headed Jonah who is into automobile safety. Still, the world can always surprise you. I did not know until I studied World of Volvo that there was once a genuinely hot Volvo: the P1800, which looks like it was made by Alfa Romeo in 1965, though it was initially built in West Bromwich. Simon Templar drove the P1800 in The Saint, but the World of Volvo’s P1800 belonged to Irv Gordon, who drove three million miles in it – the world record for a private car. There is the kicker: of course it was a Volvo. I don’t know what Irv, a schoolteacher and resident of Long Island, was........

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