Assar Gabrielsson

Assar Gabrielsson
Assar Gabrielsson at Volvo AB in 1960.
Born	Assar Thorvald Nathaniel Gabrielsson (1891-08-13)13 August 1891 Korsberga, Skaraborgs län, Sweden
Died	28 May 1962(1962-05-28) (aged 70) Gothenburg, Sweden
Nationality	Swedish
Occupation	Business
Known for	co-founder of Volvo
Spouse(s)	Anna Theresia "Tessan" Andreasson (1916-1962)
Children	Lars, Barbro, Jan and Bo
Parent(s)	Gabriel Nathanael Gabrielsson and Anna Helmina Larsson

Assar Thorvald Nathanael Gabrielsson (13 August 1891 – 28 May 1962) was a Swedish industrialist and co-founder of Volvo.

He married Anna Theresia ("Tessan") Andreasson (1890–1964) in 1916. They had four children; Lars, Barbro, Jan and Bo.

Assar Gabrielsson held a bachelor's degree in economics and worked as a sales manager with bearing manufacturer SKF in Gothenburg in the early 1900s. He was employed in 1916 by Björn Prytz at the sales department and was appointed sales manager for the entire SKF company group on 20 June 1922. He held that position until the new automobile company AB Volvo was founded as a subsidiary company within the SKF company group.

In June 1924 when Assar Gabrielsson met his old friend Gustaf Larson in Stockholm, he unveiled his plans to try to establish the manufacturing of a new Swedish automobile. Gustaf Larson had worked for SKF between 1917-1919 but now worked for the company AB Galco in Stockholm. They made an agreement in August 1924 at the Sturehof restaurant in Stockholm, signed in a written contract more than one year later, on 16 December 1925. In this contract Gustav was supposed to carry out the engineering work for a new car, as well as an investment plan for a complete new manufacturing plant, but would only be rewarded for that work in case the project would turn out well, after at least 100 produced cars and in the case this was achieved before 1 January 1928. This famous contract shows that Assar Gabrielsson "owned" the project and that it was a high-risk project without any guarantees. Assar took the economic risks himself and Gustav, in the worst case, would have worked on the project without being rewarded, but still would have had his salary from AB Galco in Stockholm. Most of the capital that Assar intended to use for the project initially was actually extra sales commissions that he had saved from the time he was the managing director for the SKF subsidiary in Paris in 1921-22.

Back to 1922-23

The original idea, presented by Assar to SKF, was to start an automobile manufacturing business within SKF in order to get advantages over competitors when developing new bearings for the automobile industry, increased sales of bearings, but more important, the positive effects it would have on Swedish industry as a whole. He developed these ideas during the time he worked as managing director for the SKF subsidiary company in Paris 1921-22 when he discovered that competitor bearing companies in Europe had started to invest a lot in automobile companies in order to secure their sales to key customers. However, Gabrielsson failed to convince the board of SKF about his ideas, and the SKF company core business was bearings with no room for an automobile company. Assar then decided to build a test series of ten vehicles with his own financing and later present the car and an entire investment plan to SKF. The idea to build a pre-series of ten vehicles was most certainly related to the fact that no company would have given them an offer for the components (engines, gearboxes, chassis components etc.) with a less quantity and Assar were at that time certain that SKF would approve his plans in due time. Engineering, documentation and investment planning was carried out exactly in the same way as if it had been carried out by SKF in order to prepare for the set up of a new automobile company. Assar most certainly had the full support from the managing director of SKF, Mr. Björn Prytz, at that time, as long as his 'private' project did not interfere with his work as sales manager for SKF.