These are the years that saw the decline of the US and British car industries and the ascent of the Japanese. Cars got safer, smaller and more efficient. We started driving hatchbacks and the MPV was invented. In fact, for an industry that often didn’t know where its next meal was coming from, a lot got done. So unless your car predates 1970, it owes a lot to the 1970s.

It all started so well. In 1970 Steve McQueen made Le Mans, and at the wheel of a Porsche 911 and 917 made driving cooler than it ever had been. But it all went wrong almost immediately with the US Clean Air Act of 1970. If you’re under 50, you’re one of the children whose health and future the Act was designed to protect, and of course we’re very grateful. But we can’t help but mourn the US muscle car, which was at its maddest in 1970 with the monstrous, bewinged Plymouth Superbird. But because of the Act, the muscle car was stone dead in just a year in the most extraordinary, instant mass-extinction event in automotive history.

The oil crisis of ’73 and the recession that followed nearly did for the supercar industry too. Some of the most famous names changed hands more often than an old fiver and bounced in and out of bankruptcy; car magazines regularly arrived at the factories of Italy’s Supercar Valley to test a new model only to find the gates locked shut, or the paint still drying on the car they were meant to be driving. But Lamborghini somehow still managed to make the Countach. It was the definitive seventies supercar; shocking and angular to look at and terrifying to drive. First shown in 1971, it took three years to get the cash together to get it into production.

The British car industry pretty much did die in the seventies; from making 1.9 million cars in 1972 it slumped to half that number by the end of the decade, and soon not a single British-owned volume carmaker was left. But the oil crisis wasn’t to blame; just look at the cars the British carmakers were insulting us with. The Austin Allegro, launched in 1973, had all the dynamism and sex appeal of your elderly Auntie Flo in her mauve Sunday best. By comparison with VW’s Golf, launched just a year later with Giugiaro’s hallmark seventies ‘folded-paper’ styling — and a practical hatchback – the Allegro looks dumpy and retarded. No wonder buyers – Brits included – deserted the British carmakers.

Others were showing the old powers how it ought to be done. Honda’s super-clean, super-frugal CVCC-powered cars led the Japanese assault on the US. American buyers, once chauvinistic but now desperate for reliable, economical cars loved them, and the US car industry has never really recovered. Volvo’s VESC experimental safety vehicle not only presaged how Volvos would look for the next 20 years but had two decades’ worth of safety advances aboard too; some of which we now take for granted (crumple zones, airbags) and some, like reversing cameras, that are still reserved for high-end cars.

But Giugiaro’s Megagamma concept was arguably the most significant of the seventies, though its impact wouldn’t be felt until much later. It started life as a sketch for a competition run by New York’s Museum of Modern Art in ’76 to design a new checker cab for the city. To cut congestion but create more cabin space Guigiaro decided to build upwards, and the people carrier was born.

If you want to see how the car moved on the ‘70s, look at the performance cars that bookmark the decade. At one end, that crude Plymouth Superbird. At the other, the Audi Quattro; turbocharged, four-wheel drive and beautifully made. And frankly, not all that different to the 270bhp, turbocharged, four-wheel drive and beautifully made Volkswagen Golf R that’s sitting on my drive as I write this. The logbook for my car says 2010, but I know it was born in the seventies.

A few more muscle cars trickled out in ’71, but the Superbird’s massive rear wing marks the literal high-point of muscle car design, and also its swan-song.

1971 Lamborghini Countach concept

Why are all the best supercars – McLaren F1, Bugatti EB110 – launched into the teeth of recessions? Fortunately, the Countach’s incandescent styling meant it lasted into the nineties.

1972 Volvo VESC

This ESV embarrassed some of the bigger players who had taken a distinctly lax approach to their buyers’ health. Volvos have sold on safety ever since.

1973 Austin Allegro

Just bloody awful: epitomized everything that was wrong with the British car industry. Some say there’s no such thing as a bad car now, but there was back then.

1974 Volkswagen Golf

There had been hatchbacks before, but none looked as good, or mixed premium feel with affordable price like the Golf. Set the template that family cars still follow.

1975 Porsche 911 Turbo

‘911’ and ‘Turbo’ put together have always seemed slightly tautological, and were certainly terrifying in these early cars. But 35 years on they’re still being made.

1976 Aston Martin Lagonda

William Town’s insane styling is one of the stand-out designs of the decade. Digital dash and computer-controlled everything meant they broke down as much as they stood out.

1978 Lancia Megagamma

At the Turin motor show Giugiaro unveiled a concept that would spawn not just a new car, but a whole new type of car.

1980 Audi Quattro

It might have been launched in 1980 but the Audi Quattro  –  full of brawn but laced with new tech – was the ultimate expression of seventies automotive ethos. A truly modern performance car; still sensational to drive, and still inspiring current fast cars.

In a little reprise of our recent Scandinavian theme, we felt the need to share with you an incredible picture of a rare moment of Volvo Air.

Imagine the momentum the driver of this 240 would have had to carry to release all four wheels to such a great height!

Makes that hump I traverse on the school run every morning in my 740 Estate look all the more interesting!

I’ve always liked the classic three box profile of the 240 saloon. This makes me want one even more.

Sometimes, to really understand a car, you have to see it in its native habitat. So if you’ve never really got Swedish cars, and never really understood why some people are so obsessed with them when they don’t handle, don’t have much power and seldom look that sexy, it might just be that you haven’t spent much time in Scandinavia.

The driving up here is unlike anywhere else on earth. Power and handling just aren’t important when it can take two days to drive between major towns on sheet-ice roads you’d struggle to stand up on, across which Arctic gales blow powder snow so hard and fast that your headlights illuminate what looks like a weird white conveyor belt running at right angles over the road. There are orange markers to show where the road is, or was, but you lose sight of them when the snowdrift blows higher.

It is — without question — the most beautiful environment I have ever driven through. It starts out Alpine, then turns polar as you head north. It is stark, monochrome and alien. Much of the time you can only see three things – rock, water and snow – and three colours; blue, grey and white. The feeling that you’re driving through a Tolkein novel is exaggerated by the place names; on one 2000-mile Norwegian Arctic road trip I passed through Hell, Moan, Hammerfest and Orcanger. There’s something Mordor-ous about the long, narrow, rough-hewn rocky tunnels through the mountains, and the weird optical and climatic effects you get this far north. As well as the Northern Lights, there’s the midnight sun and the Fata Morgana, where the dry atmosphere and low temperatures combine to reflect images of the landscape onto places they couldn’t possible be, like a mountain range on the sea horizon. It’s beautiful, but deadly at the same time. You look at the whiteness, feel the painful cold, and realize that man is simply not welcome there.

So you start to realize why Swedish cars are the way they are; why their priorities are different. Longevity, utter dependability, seat comfort and clever cabin design suddenly assume huge significance. And while it’s dangerous to generalize about whole nations, Scandinavian cars reflect their national traits as much as their driving conditions. They are a deeply democratic, practical, unflashy lot, and that – together with punitive new car taxes — means exotic metal is rare. Despite the conditions, cars are made to last longer, and you see healthy, cared-for, Cold War-era kit that you wouldn’t find in a scrapyard elsewhere in Europe. Until you get very far north they don’t bother much with SUVs, despite daily driving conditions that would bring Britain grinding to stasis. The Scandinavian car of choice is an old Volvo, Saab, Merc or Audi estate, maybe all-wheel drive but always running dinner-plate fog lamps, studded tyres and a roofbox for the skis, sides streaked with salt and being driven flat-out through a white-out, powder snow billowing out behind it.

And I’d be amazed if there’s a part of the world with a better standard of driving. Stop a Norwegian to ask for directions and you expect to get it in pace notes. “Post office? Down to the end of the road, then left 60 over crest, don’t cut.” The entire country seems to drive just beyond the available level of grip; I was once overtaken at 70mph on sheet ice by a VW van whose driver calmly corrected a massive oversteer moment as he came off the gas, and I tried to follow another in an Audi estate whose flickering tail-lamps told me he was left-foot braking into every bend. This is why they’ve produced so many Formula One and world rally drivers; if you learn to drive in these conditions, driving on anything else is easy.

The cars produced by these conditions and this mindset are distinctive. Ask a Saab nut to name ten things his car should have and you’ll find he can run on to a dozen pretty easily; the firm and its products have just about the clearest identity you’ll find. Cupholders; cool ones. A wraparound screen and an equally enveloping dash. The ignition down by the handbrake, one-touch air vents and folding rear seats. Viewed in profile, a hatchback, teardrop-shaped glass and triangular rear lights. Front wheel drive, a turbocharged engine and as many fighter-jet cues as you can cram in.
But building a new one isn’t simply a question of ticking the boxes. Saab has a philosophy too, one where safety and comfort and quality are more important than simple dynamism. It adds up to a very complete picture of how a car should be. You’d have thought this distinctiveness would have made it a success. Despite the recent financial hiccup, sales of premium-brand cars have skyrocketed in recent years. Saab and Volvo only needed to capture a small slice of that market; people who wanted something a cut above a boggo Ford, but not another predictable, me-too BMW.

But they didn’t. GM’s bosses had plainly never been to Scandinavia either. They owned Saab, but they never really got it, and it did so badly that they almost had to shut it down when the recession hit. Ford did a better job with Volvo, but both have now been sold as their parent companies restructure. Volvo is now controlled by Chinese firm Geely, and Saab has the owner it deserves in Dutch multi-millionaire and borderline madman Victor Muller, owner of sports car maker Spyker.

He’s exactly what Saab needs; car-obsessed, deep-pocketed and as idiosyncratic as the brand he now controls. If Geely has the sense to let Volvo do its thing unmolested, and with Koenigsegg and now Zenvo making nutcase supercars, Think Nordic making electric cars and Valmet in Finland coachbuilding cars for Fisker and Porsche, maybe more people will ‘get’ what makes Scandinavian cars so cool.

Zenvo ST1

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Where do you start with the Zenvo ST1? With the fact this it is Denmark’s first and only supercar? With its extreme, angular, ground-breaking looks? With its equally extreme power and torque figures, both of which are in four figures? With the fact that its top speed has to be electronically limited to 233mph, at which speed it will cross its home country in just 18 minutes? Whichever way you look at it, the ST1 is a staggering new sportscar from a brand — and indeed a country – with no automotive heritage. Zenvo’s Nordic logo incorporates a shield with the name at the top and a stylized drawing of Thor’s hammer, intended to represent “massive cars with plenty of strength”. Just 15 units are scheduled for production.

Fisker Karma

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Although its HQ is officially in LA, we think the Fisker Karma deserves inclusion here. The firm’s founder and chief designer Henrik Fisker is Danish; previous credits include most of the current Aston Martin range, so he has form. His radical, gorgeous £80,000, 400bhp plug-in hybrid Karma will be built by Valmet in Finland; it can cover 50 miles on emissions-free electric power and give an average of 100mpg.

Volvo XC90

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A relatively rare example of a Swedish car company producing an iconic car while under foreign ownership. On its launch in 2003 the XC90 was so popular that there were waiting lists a year long in the UK – and this for a Volvo, remember, not some new Ferrari. Early versions had a lethargic diesel engine-gearbox combination but apart from this, the firm’s first SUV was pretty much flawless in concept and execution. The seven-seat cabin layout is its strongest suit, with a usable third row that folds fully flat, a genius integrated child-seat that slides forward to within reaching distance of the fronts, and a front cabin almost without equal for comfort and ergonomics.

Koenigsegg CCR

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Sweden makes dull, safe, dependable cars. Italy does the outrageous supercars with unpronounceable names, right? Not entirely. In 1994 Sweden added a third automaker to Volvo and Saab, and it makes rather different cars. In 2005, a Koenigsegg CCR broke the McLaren F1’s long-standing record as the world’s fastest production car at a test at the Nardo high speed circuit deep in southern Italy; home territory for its exotic rivals. Two other cars have since bested it, but Sweden’s only sports car maker had finally arrived. Founder Christian von Koenigsegg founded his firm at the age of 22. Owning a supercar by that age would be impressive; starting your own supercar maker and creating a new model that bears your name seems barely credible. He sketched the original design and two years later he had a prototype. His first client took delivery of his car at the Geneva Auto Show in 2002. Top Gear famously binned one at its test track and criticized the aero package, but your correspondent did 214mph in one and found it pretty composed.

Porsche Boxster

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Eh? What’s more German than a Porsche? But since 1997, over 220,000 Boxsters and Caymans have been built for Porsche by Finnish coachbuilder Valmet at its near-unpronounceable factory in Uusikaupunki, Finland. It is the only company or factory licenced to build Porsches outside Germany, and a sign of real confidence from a company obsessed with build quality. Other than a letter on the VIN plate, you just can’t tell the difference between a Finnish and a German-made Boxster or Cayman.

Volvo Venus Bilo

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The first concept car is generally thought to be the sensational Buick Y-job of 1938, created by Harley Earl, head of General Motor’s famous ‘Art and Colour’ section. But Volvo would disagree with that claim. In 1933 it built the one-off Venus Bilo, intended, like the Y-job, to test public reaction to futuristic, streamlined styling. The production car it spawned, the radical-looking 1935 PV36 wasn’t a great success, but it didn’t put Volvo off making mad concepts.

Saab 900

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If space constraints mean we could only include one ‘standard’ Saab, I guess it would have to be the 900 Classic, though plenty of Saab anoraks will argue. But this car lasted 15 years and united all the attributes that we now think make a Saab a Saab, from the wraparound, helmet-visor screen to turbocharged engines. There was a lot that was odd about it, like the combination of front-wheel drive and longitudinal engine that was so space-inefficient you could fit a couple of suitcases in lengthwise between the motor and the wings. But much was brilliant too, like comfort, space, ride, torque, quality and reliability. 900 Classics are rightly going up in value.

Saab 96

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Oh, okay, one more Saab. You can’t really leave out the 96, which although it didn’t sell in such big numbers as the 900 has a madder and more distinctive and recognizable shape, and which opened up Saab’s most important export markets in its 20-year production run. Erik Carlsson’s three RAC and two Monte Carlo rally victories in the early sixties in the 96 had the same effect on Saab’s image and acceptance as Mini’s exploits in the Monte.

Volvo 240

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If the 900 is the definitive Saab, then the 240 is definitely the definitive Volvo, with almost 3 million made over nearly 20 years from 1973. Unlike the Saab, its super-square looks owe nothing to aerodynamics but everything to Volvo’s seminal early ‘70s Experimental Safety Car concept. It unquestionably saved lives, but the hearse-like styling looked like it was better suited to carrying those already deceased. But if Sweden had a national car, this would be it. British designer Peter Horbury, asked to style the later Volvo V70 estate, said it was ‘like being handed the Swedish crown jewels’.

Volvo P1800

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Proof that the Swedes can do cool as well as cold when they try. The P1800 was designed by a Swede working for Italian styling house Frua, and its launch at the ’61 Geneva motor show was overshadowed by Jaguar’s lissome E-Type with its claimed 150mph top speed. But the P1800 won the public’s attention back by providing Simon Templar’s wheels in the original run of The Saint, making it one of the iconic shapes of the sixties.

Think City

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Nineteen years of developing electric cars, including a flirtation with Ford which cost the bigger firm $150m might finally be about to pay off. Think is putting its 60mph electric city car with a 100-mile range on sale in its native Norway, Austria and Switzerland, is eying other markets and planning to start production in the US too. Buyers are desperate for usable electric cars, governments are keen to encourage them, and the falling cost of batteries will soon make them more affordable; expect Think to capitalize.

After announcing their best first quarter for eighteen years, Volvo are throwing their hat in this competitive ring with the all new S60. Prices will range from £23,295 for the D3 ES (163PS) up to £36,745 for the top-of-the-range T6 AWD SE Lux Geartronic Premium. Orders can be placed now ahead of the car’s arrival in dealer showrooms in July, with first customer deliveries in August.

The design of the S60 is certainly sportier and more dynamic than most other Volvo launches of late– and the company are claiming that chassis, running gear and engine refinements will make this the most dynamic drivers’ cars they have ever produced.

This is probably in part due to the high level of criticism levelled in that direction of the latest manifestations of the V70 and the older S40s and S60s which were relative plodders at every level. The Desiel D3 and D5s will offer an admirable level of twist, horespower and economy, while the T6 updates the tradition of the T5 series of hot Volvos with seven second pullaway and a top end of over 150MPH.

The company are also making a huge feature of the disturbing Pedestrian Detection system, which purports to be able to recognise movement and act accordingly, whamming on the anchors if the human involved fails to react. We doubt this is a selling point to real drivers, as the thought that a computer combined with lasers and motion sensors override driver input with little warning is frankly, a little bit frightening.

The Saab 95, meanwhile, while offering a new lease of life to an increasingly broad and passionate Saab faithful, may not have put clea-enough water between it and its mediocre forebears. Sure, there are apparently a host of high tech new features. But the car doesn’t well, look that different from the last 95.

The innovation Saab claim is mostly under the skin. For example, there’s an aircraft inspired head-up information display (HUD), MP3/iPod integration, Harman Kardon audio system, DAB radio, adaptive cruise control, DriveSense adaptive chassis with continuous damping control, keyless entry and starting, dual-zone climate control, adaptive parking assistance, and XWD with electronic LSD — the all-wheel-drive system.

The all-turbo powertrain line-up carries forward Saab’s rightsizing engine strategy, focusing on responsible performance through the development of highly efficient and four cylinder turbo engines. Starting at 1.6-litres* (180PS) all transmissions are six speed and with diesel power, CO2 emissions as low as 139 g/km are also on offer.

But, then, Saab interiors were always a strong point, as were the drivetrain.

For us, there’s something lacking in the whole package, that difficult-to-define element that made Saabs like the 900 and the 96 solid but stylish cars and ones that could achieve cult status through their driver feedback and offbeat character. We would like to have seen a return to the innovations of apparent style rather than loads of invisible tech.

Wether either of these essential new launches gets these fine companies, both of which have a true heritage of producing memorable cars, back on track remains to be seen.

So, toward the end of the sixties, someone at the heart of the Volvo establishment came up with a wheeze: restyle the roof and create a sporty estate. There had been precedents, of course. The ‘shooting brake’ format, in which a sports car was extended to the rear in order for the landed gentry to be able to store the Purdeys and the downed pheasant yet retain a modicum of raffish style, had been seen on the odd Aston. Ferrari’s 250 ‘breadvan’ was an extreme version of the idea that style didn’t necessarily have to compromise utility. The Reliant Scimitar GTE, though, had broken ground in that particular area in Europe to a broader audience, whilst Chevrolet’s burly Nomad wagon had been created out of the Tri Chevy saloons of the mid fifties.

But wherever they got the idea, in 1971 Volvo introduced the p1800ES. Lopping the roof off and extending it with elongated side windows and a sexily raked C-pillar as well as a frameless glass hatch (that was resurrected by the cute and stylish c30 in 2006), pretty soon the wagon version of the existing classic had achieved a wealth of new admirers.

The ES gained a couple of hundred pounds in weight and so was a little slower on pullaway than the Coupé, but a young rakish family cold retain its stylish integrity of a weekend: an idea that has echoed down the automotive decades. This is why the 1800 ES remains for us the coolest Scandinavian car ever produced.

At the first hint of falling snow, thoughts turn to utility as the prime motivator of automotive choice. Of course the SUV genre has had some killer bad press over the last couple of years. They don’t make sense for most of the year, but in these days of proper winters, they certainly have their place. And right now, with food and gifts to shop, kids to transport to seasonal festivity: which one of us wouldn’t want a big lump of Iron driven at all four corners in our driveway?

Here are our three faves.

As well as the classic Volvo take on utility as encapsulated in the Volvo 445 Duett (top) there a host of other early practical vehicles and offroaders that float our aesthetic as well as shed-haunting, daddish sensibilities. The Landcruiser FJ 40 (above, is an obviously delectable classic – but for us, even the tarted-up version of the humble and perennial Landrover Defender (below) is more than a little worthy of desire.

If Rudolph ever did run out of steam, then surely Santa would choose on the these stylishly workaday whips for his yuletide deliveries.

love this rendering of the humble, but subtly phat and menacing Volvo Amazon.

Volvo must be one of the most misunderstood automotive brands ever created. Tarnished with decades of middle-of-the-road, family focussed earnestness, I’ve always thought there has been something innately stylish about most of the cars the company has marketed.

The 240s, 740s, 850s and V70s had the boxy utilitarianism that was a template for getting the job done. The P1800s meanwhile were rakishly dashing, and many were produced with Jenson DNA here in England.  The C30 remains an interesting little hatchback with a stamp of individuality amongst the cookie cutter mass.

The Amazon may have reminded the world of the stolid end of the Scandinavian identity, but as the creator of the bad-looking Amazon above drew out, there was an element of that clichéd cool sexiness there too. Watch this space for more Scandinavian adventures.

In its casual misogyny the ad is something that Don Draper and his acolytes on Madison Avenue would have been more than proud of. All that talk of women being automotively challenged whilst domineering their husbands’ finance and aspiring ultimately to the lofty heights of furniture and fur coat aquistion. The thought that that sort of aesthetic could sell Volvos is hard to get your head around. Particularly in light of this recent French TV ad for the C30.

The whole ethos of the campaign is fragrant with a colourful, pre-credit crunch frivolity and inclusiveness. But those days are over. Open any magazine or switch on any TV for the next year or so and the car ads you do see will be reeking of worthiness and screaming about engineering solutions to environmental problems. Look closely. There’s not much frivolity out there. The current trend, rather, is exemplified by the 2009 campaign for Audi A4. Progress is beauty. It’s basically a subtle evolution of the classic strap “Vorsprung Durch Technik”. We couldn’t agree more.