Volvo is so enthusiastic about its hometown’s best-known coffee roaster, Da Matteo, that it flies a couple of baristas and a lot of coffee beans to major international auto shows and passes out joe on press days. There’s a lot to get your attention at an auto show, but even jaded attendees will agree that Volvo brews the best cup.

Consumers seem to think the same, even though the coffee served at your local dealer probably came from a Keurig cup. Sales are way up this year, buoyed by the brand’s hot XC90 (admittedly, its other models aren’t fairing quite as well). A host of new products are on the way, and for once Volvo has something to sell other than safety.

Over its 89 years, Volvo has been closely connected to a number of automakers – most notably Ford, which ran the company for a decade, and its current owner Geely. But Volvo is most closely linked to its longtime competitor, Saab.

In typical Swedish fashion, this rivalry was not marked by bitter animosity. The two companies were located about an hour apart from one another, with Volvo calling cosmopolitan Gothenburg home and Saab camping out in much smaller Trollhättan (known today as Trollywood for its role in the Swedish film industry).

In fact, Volvo’s aerospace division built engines for Saab’s military jets. At the time, both plane manufacturers operated under the same umbrella as their car-building divisions. That compatriotism exists today, even though Saab is defunct. If there’s currently a Saab in your garage, or even if you’ve owned one in the last six months, Volvo’s American arm considers you a friend of Sweden and will offer you the same $1,000 “loyalty” bonus toward the purchase of a new car that it extends to its current owners.

What is PPO Dental Insurance Plans?

PPO (Preferred Provider Organizations) is a network of dentist under contact with a dental insurance company which provides special rates on dental care; but the insured has an option to choose a dental care provider outside the network of dentists.

Generally the PPO dental insurance plans are higher premiums and there are claims forms to be completed by the dental client.

Volvo wasn’t interested in picking flowers. It wanted the automotive arm of truck manufacturer DAF, which would include its assembly plant, its Renault engines, and the first mainstream application of the CVT gearbox. Volvo acquired DAF’s car business over the course of a few years in the early 1970s and, in typical Volvo safety-oriented style, it slapped big bumpers and head restraints on the little DAF 66 and rebadged it as the Volvo 66. The Dutch assembly plant would grow to include a partnership with Mitsubishi in the early ’90s. Today, it operates as NedCar and builds Mini Coopers for BMW.

Volvo is no longer involved in NedCar or DAF (which sold its CVT division to Bosch, by the way), but its acquisition of DAF helped ensure the success of CVTs. Ironically, even though Volvo’s investment helped make CVTs mainstream, the Swedish automaker’s affair with them was brief, and today it utilizes only conventional automatics.

Idyllic Halifax was a small fishing city of about a quarter-million in the early 1960s when Volvo arrived and became the first import brand to build cars en masse in North America. American consumers on the East Coast developed a fondness for the Volvo Amazon line in the late 1950s, leading Volvo to seek out a plant in the Americas.

Halifax ponied up incentives, allowing Volvo to take advantage of a pact eliminating tariffs on cars built and exported between the United States and Canada. Volvo built cars there until the end of 1998, when it said its facility was no longer viable compared to larger factories in Europe.

Dental Plan Decisions

The dental plan decision making process is not an easy task when purchasing coverage for yourself, family, business, or your employees. There are many dental plan decisions to make. Such dental insurance decisions include considering a PPO (Preferred Provider Organizations), HMO (Health Maintenance Organization), dental indemnity insurance plans, and discount dental plans.

General Motors will recall 895,232 examples of the 2014-2015 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra 1500 pickups in the US. The campaign will also affect the trucks in markets worldwide, and the total number the company will recall is 1,037,982.

The Problem: A steel cable connects the seatbelt to the vehicle, but over time repeated bending can cause the part to fatigue and separate

Finding the right value in dental insurance or dental plans is an important step in purchasing dental coverage for you and your family. Both types of dental plans have advantages and disadvantages and one size does not fit everyone.

Keeping this in mind is an important rule when you shop for the dental plan that best fits your needs. We sell both individual and family dental insurance and dental discount plans throughout all 50 states. Here are some brief examples that may help you decide

For the second year in a row, problems related to vehicle infotainment systems have topped the list of complaints reported in JD Power’s Vehicle Dependability Study. While we take issue with the idea of equating poor connectivity performance to vehicle reliability, the bottom line here is that many automakers just aren’t getting their infotainment system designs right, and owners are getting tired of it.

With mobile technology now ubiquitous, infotainment systems are becoming one of the most fundamental points of contact with the vehicle. And while the emotional connection with automobiles might be on the wane for many, how our cars interact with external technology (and us) is becoming an increasingly higher priority.