The Weaver family should be on a survival TV show. The son walked away when his car went off the road and down a steep slope. The mother's car flipped over, but she was unhurt. A tree fell on the front of the father's car, but it was still drivable.
"We would like to thank Volvo for helping to protect our lives," says Richard, father in the Weaver family from New Castle, Kentucky.
The Weaver clan has owned eight Volvo vehicles since 1994 and Richard is firmly convinced his family would not be complete today if they had driven anything but a Volvo. Several nasty incidents have befallen them in recent years, but all of them were miraculously able to climb out of their Volvo vehicles unscathed.
Son Jeremy was the first. In 1994 he was 17 and doing local pizza deliveries after buying his first car, a Volvo 240. On his normal delivery round on one rainy evening he was unlucky enough to veer off the road. His car slid down a 10m slope and was brought to a halt by heavy trees.
"As he climbed out of his car, he grabbed hold of something," says Richard. "It was a memorial cross; someone else had died in an accident at the very same spot."
It took two tow-trucks to winch Jeremy's car up the slope. Once back on the road, he got in and tried the ignition. The car started and it had suffered so little damage that he was able to go on delivering pizzas. Now 30, Jeremy no longer delivers pizzas but still drives a Volvo vehicle: an 850.
More recently, Richard's daughter, who lives in Dallas, was visiting the family with her son. At the end of their stay, mother Nancy was giving them a lift in the family S70 to the airport to catch their flight. Enroute, traffic on the highway suddenly ground to a halt and Nancy lost control of the car; it flipped at approximately 100 km/h.
"The car was a write-off," said Richard. "But all three of them were able to get out and walk away from the car."
A few days prior to the highway incident, Kentucky was hit by a series of storms and a tree fell onto the family's 1985 740 GLE. Luckily, Richard was not in it at the time.
"That was a really bad week for us," said Richard. "But even though the tree fell onto the hood, the car would still start and it was still drivable. It had done almost 500,000 miles [800,000 km]."
But he and Nancy couldn't do without a Volvo vehicle for long. First, Richard flew to Dallas to borrow their daughter's 240 and drove 14 hours back to Kentucky. Then he went to Atlanta, Georgia to buy a black 1998 Volvo V70R and drove it eight hours home.
"I'm honoured to drive Volvos," said Richard. "I think you make the best cars in the world for the money. ‘Volvo for Life' is a slogan that really means what it says."
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