In any design there’s a bargain between utility and beauty. You get something that is easy on the eye or easy to use. Rarely both. Some say it’s not difficult to see what won Volvo’s negotiation. If anyone finds the Volvo wagon beautiful then maybe we need a new definition of beauty. Often, I think we do.
Jan Wilsgaard’s masterpiece was the Volvo 140 saloon of 1966, as great an expression of Swedish good sense and appetite for a well-managed life as a meatball, a glass of akvavit in a Kattegat sunset – swatting the midges away – or a Bruno Mathsson chair, all blonde wood and woven linen webbing. Wilsgaard has no challengers for the title of Sweden’s greatest car designer. Except he was a Norwegian born in Brooklyn. In matters of design, especially Swedish design, things are rarely quite as they seem.
The 140 succeeded the 120 Amazon (Amason in Sweden) and made a nod to the past by having a pressed metal grille, the design of which
