VOLVO pulled off the automotive public relations coup of the decade last month, when it announced that it would stop making diesel and petrol engines from 2019.

It is amazing — even in this ever-changing world of ours — how the sands of time shift so quickly. Who, 20 years ago for example, would have predicted that after the explosion in the SUV/crossover market, that there would be a savage spurt in sales in what is now known as the premium compact segment.

There was a time not so long ago when it was feared — with some reasonable justification — that Volvo was about to disappear down the same hatch that swallowed whole its’ fellow Swedish manufacturer Saab, writes Declan Colley