Volvo Travel Club – Volvo Amazon Pictures

During the second half of 1959 Volvo’s sales department launch the Volvo Travel Club, open to all owners of a Volvo both private and business. The club quickly becomes very popular and in an article in the customer magazine Ratten from 1960 Volvo claims that the number of new members is around 500 per week.

As a member you were provided with information in all aspects of questions related to foreign travels both on vacation and during business. It could be help with planning your trip, making reservations, performing service on your car, legal and practical help in the event of accidents, etc. – this as Volvo provided this service through their dealership and agency network across Europe. The Travel Club also provided car rental and arranged different kinds of car based arranged trips.

Volvo Travel Club had fixed offices in Copenhagen, Hamburg, Frankfurt, the Hague, Brussels, Paris, Basel, Zurich, Montreux, Lugano, Vienna, Rome, Nice and Barcelona besides the offices in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Helsingborg. As a member you also had the liberty to use any of these 17 offices as your fixed address during your time abroad, for instance to get your mail.

”Volvo Travel Club does not abandon the member, as he has crossed the border of the country. In each and everyone of the seventeen base cities is a fixed Travel Club office, that is constantly ready to help him with almost any kind of problem. Here, he can get advice regarding what route to take, what hotels to choose, road conditions, procurement sources, technical service, etc. Here hotel reservations are made and reliable references to good service stations given.”

The membership magazine Tripp came in six issues per year, in the beginning in the shape of stencils that were mailed to the members but from 1960 was distributed as a magazine. It contained advice on arrangements of car related travels as well as articles and short stories ”intended to stimulate the interest in traveling in general.” The members were also provided with a car map over Sweden and a Travel Club badge to fit in the grill of the car as well as a membership pin. Membership was only available for Swedish residents.

Unfortunately, Volvo Travel Club didn’t last long and it disappeared towards the mid 1960s. Unclear why.