SOME marques are celebrated for their safety, such as the Volvos which feature in the picture above.

Now the latest Subaru Impreza (right) has received the highest rating in the small-car category for offset crash tests run by American insurance companies.

Brian O'Neill, president of their institute for highway safety, said: "All measures recorded indicated a low risk of injury. This was a very good performance."

Volvo is famous for promoting car safety, and has an award-winning £59 million safety centre.

But it has another reason for celebration. It's 75 years since the first Volvo car was produced a 2.0-litre 28bhp convertible known as the OV4.

Since then, more than 12 million Volvos have been produced and though the name is still regarded as Swedish, the company owned by Ford since 1999 has factories in Sweden, Belgium, Holland, Malaysia and South Africa.

It was 44 years ago that the first Volvos came to the UK and this is now Volvo's third largest export market after Germany and the USA.