Volvo Celebrates 10th Anniversary of Safety Concept Car

Ten years have passed since Volvo unveiled the SCC (Safety Concept Car) at the Detroit Auto Show – the concept car showcasing the company’s latest technological advancements that eventually trickled down into its production cars. Its styling also influenced the Volvo C30 hot-hatch.

Volvo claims the SCC was an early example of a concept car where its designers and engineers worked closely together to offer a vehicle that showed both technological advancements and future design language.

“Concept vehicles are usually design or technology studies that give car buyers a taste of the future,” said Stefan Jacoby, Volvo Car Corporation’s President and CEO, in a press release. “The Volvo SCC, however, has added impact because it was both attractive and high-tech. It is an early example of how we design our cars around our customers’ wishes, needs and limitations.”

Up until the SCC was unveiled, Volvo had been known as the safety-mobile that protected occupants in a crash, but Volvo wanted to develop safety features that helped the automobile avoid a crash.

“When we began work on the concept car at the end of the 1990s, Volvo was still primarily known for making family cars designed to protect their occupants in a collision,” said Östen Strandberg, the man responsible for the development of the SCC. “The SCC signaled the start of a new approach which enhanced safety for the occupants, where the car’s most important safety task is to help avoid dangerous situations and accidents in the first place.”

Today, 14 of the active-safety systems showcased on the SCC project can be found in current Volvos:

• Forward Collision Warning
• Head-up Display Info
• BLIS (Blind Spot Information System)
• Lane Departure Driver Warning and Driver Alert
• ACC (Adaptive Cruise Control
• Emergency Brake Lights
• Safety Cameras (used in Pedestrian Detection and Collision Warning systems)
• Active Bending Lights
• Volvo Sensus
• Height-adjustable rear seat (present in integrated two-stage child booster cushions)
• Protection for pedestrians (energy absorbing front structure)
• Keyless Go
• Mobile App allowing owner to communicate with the car through mobile phone

In 2002, one year after the SCC debuted in Detroit, Volvo began integrating the safety and styling features in to a production car. The production C30 was unveiled at the Paris auto show in 2006.

motortrend.com