The above headline gives me an opportunity to display a photo of one of my favorite Volvos, "the PV544". It was the first Volvo I'd seen, the first I'd driven, and left a life-long impression of Volvos as safe, mid-size cars that are fun to drive. I've owned three, the first two being variants of the "122S Amazon", also known in Canada as the "Volvo Canadian". Don't laugh... Volvos for North America were once assembled in Halifax, Nova Scotia and, yes, I was there when Prince Bernhardt of Sweden cut the ribbon to open the factory.

The Volvo connection continued when the Canadian company loaned me a car for a cross-country trip from Toronto to Vancouver, south to San Francisco, back to Toronto. Just for fun my buddy and I decided we should try for an unofficial record, which led to a San Francisco-Toronto run in under 48 hours. Never beaten, probably because no one gave a damn; made for an entertaining magazine article, though. The following year I purchased the factory race car and earned a cash award (a first other than trophies) for a third place at Mosport. Moving ahead another decade I'd just returned from a lengthy sojourn with an ad agency in Europe and with a wife, two youngsters, and a mother-in-law to chauffeur I chose a Volvo wagon. That was my last Volvo and yet I maintain an affection for the marque, SUV's excepted. Okay, "an XC90" was the most recent Volvo tested for About.com and I was forced to admit it's a respectable ride, though I'm looking forward to the next tester, a Volvo C30 T5 that's similar in concept to the 1800 ES sports wagon of the 60's.

Volvo USA and Canada will make much of this 80th anniversary. Yet I'll guarantee they'll ignore an important factor in the company's North American success, the late 60's ad campaign by "the Carl Ally agency". Innovative, daring, it put the marque on the map and was the equal of Doyle, Dane, and Bernbach's award-winning Volkswagen campaigns. Ally's agency also created the Avis "We're Only Number 2" slogan aimed at unseating Hertz. Carl Ally was a cigar-smoking character who sometimes took clients for a ride in his ex-Air Force jet fighter. A few rolls and 90-degree banks and they'd agree to every last word of the copy. My kind of suit.