History
In 1868, engineer John G Grönvall founded a mechanical workshop and foundry in Skövde, Sweden. The business of John G Grönvall & Co was to supply everyday items. The company became limited in 1875, known as Sköfde Gjuteri och Mekaniska Verkstad or simply Gjuteriet. Products ranged from pots and vents to stoves and brewery equipment. Soon Gjuteriet also started manufacturing agriculture equipment and various equipment for sawing mills.
The company expanded heavily in the early 1900s, and started producing steam engines and water turbines for hydraulic power plants. In 1907, a very fruitful co-operation with the Stockholm based engineering company Fritz Egnell begun, with a one cylinder 3 hp compression ignition engine. The engine was simply named B1 - but a five men committee was set to find a name that would catch on. The committee failed, but as they were five, they settled for Penta.
In 1916, Egnell bought the company and the name changed to AB Pentaverken. Production was concentrated to engines, mostly for maritime applications. The years immediately after World War I were economically harsh, but a new product was introduced: a small two cylinder U2 outboard engine designed by Carl-Axel Skärlund. The U2 was slightly improved in 1926, and renamed U21. It remained in production up to 1962. The U2/U21 was a great success and exported worldwide. In many countries, U21 is still synonymous with outboard engine.
In 1925, Penta was approached by Assar Gabrielsson, the founder of Volvo, who needed an engine for the first Volvo automobile. Penta then designed the four cylinder 28 hp side valve Typ DA engine for the Volvo ÖV 4. In 1935, Penta became a subsidiary of Volvo.
Read more about this topic: Volvo Penta
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“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)