If you thought I was upset when I learned that the guys who brought us the Pinto now owned Volvo, imagine the nightmare that struck home today when I learned Ford is selling Volvo to Geely!!
I didn't start this thread as an anti-china thread. Frankly I have significant college coursework and a personal interest in Chinese culture and history.
My main beef is the nightmarish lack of quality control over there bleeding into what little support we had for older Volvos. I should point how many threads in here have talked about how poor the quality of parts have been in recent years - how many cheap junk parts have been arriving in OEM boxes.
Put that in the context of a country/society that hasn't valued the lives of its own people and has a nightmarish record for things we naively call "Human Rights" (but are really concepts most modern Americans can't really understand - like mass starvation, cultural genocide, mass political oppression and murder, and the execution of children (until 1994) and the mentally ill (which happened today 12/29/2009).
Don't forget lead paint on children's toys (which Sweden outlawed back in the 1920s and has been illegal in the USA since the 1970s) and most recently construction drywall used in "new" American houses with so much sulfide in it it actually rots a brand new house from the inside out. Like it or not, those are the people who will now own Volvo.
There is a lot of "blame" to go around - the almighty dollar and all that. No need to really blame "China."
Think about this. Is that what the name Volvo is going to mean now? Sure our 240s should run another 10-20 years, but then what? Move on to something else and cease to care.
Ask yourself- do you drive a 240 because it is cheap, or do you keep your (at-best) 17-year old 240 going because the name Volvo meant something more than a throw-away car? When you got your first one, did you buy that Volvo because you appreciate quality and a vehicle not planned to be obsolete in 5-10 years? If you did, they you must have believed that a Volvo was something more than an more expensive foreign car and you've got to feel some pang of loss now.
If you don't, you ought to take that 240 out to the junkyard and go buy a Kia.
What puzzles me is, where the hell in this picture is one of the most socialist governments in the world, Sweden, where is their bankroll?
Would not it be in the interest of their people, their national pride, their pride in what they brought to market, to pony up and nationalize Volvo?
Buy it from Ford. It will only cost a few billion dollars and think of all the jobs it could bring back to Sweden! Where the hell is the West's imagination?
Ford already had Volvo spin off the production of 'vintage' Volvo parts years ago. Even though they still can be bought through Volvo dealer ships, and come in Volvo boxes and bags, they are no longer produced by Volvo, but an independent company.
http://global.gcp.se/
So I don't see how anything will change on that front based on changes in Volvo Car's ownership.
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'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)
Genuine classic parts is the one good thing left here. Your PV and my Amazons can run for a very long time thanks to those folks churning out reproduction parts in good 'ole Sweden.
'Wonder if they are going to step up to the 240s - they do 140s already...
Of course China-Volvo, might not want us to buy vintage stuff through the dealer anymore and I'll have to keep the Krona to Dollar ratio in my head at all times...
Incidentally... your '93 is hardly a factory slow-mo. Didn't you plop a 16V turbo head on it?
"did you buy that Volvo because you appreciate quality and a vehicle not planned to be obsolete in 5-10 years?" Conservative buyers may have sustained Volvo from the 1940s through the 1980s, but Volvo was having more and more trouble remaining an independent company in the 1990s, which is why Ford was able to buy the automotive portion of the company.
Consider what we are like as a society: most people talk quality but they really don't care about the product lasting a decade; most want a reason to buy another product with more "features." Especially with cars, they want something suitable for their social class, something to look good in the McMansion driveway. Ford tried to market Volvo as a luxury wannabee, but too many other manufacturers were also trying to market to that demographic. Volvo NA's rotten customer service didn't help, either.
As for the future, I just can't guess how the new owners can make a success of Volvo. Maybe an aging baby boom generation will lose interest in buying the latest and greatest every few years and a conservative durable car will appeal to them again. I wish the new owners luck. I hope they can find a formula.
My '93 240 Classic wagon originally sold for a little over $23K. Which was a lot of money back in 1993, equivalent to about $35K today.
And for that, you didn't really get a lot of car. The 240 isn't particularly roomy, it was very slow (115 hp motivating 3150 lbs of car through a slushbox trans), and it didn't really have many nice 'modern conveniences'. And while they are durable and easy to work on, they weren't always particularly reliable when new, needing more little fixes (on average) than you'd need in a competing Japanese car. And to top it off, it looked like an antique, barely changed at all from the late 60's.
It took a very special brand of customer to buy such a car, with the charms well insulated from the initial buyer. It's only after 10 years and 150K miles that the value proposition finally starts to shine through, and in most cases the initial buyer has moved on by then.
To sum up, they are far better used old cars than they were new cars. And to make matters worse, they were expensive to buy, so Volvo didn't even make that much money on them.
The 850 was designed to move out of the market niche Volvo inhabited, and it sold at a roughly 3:1 clip over the 240.
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'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)
I doubt that any business in China has much interest in the manufacture and distribution of "OEM" parts for our aging Volvos, After all Volvo themselves gave that up years ago except for the small volume routed through their dealers. So nothing will change, that's my prediction.
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David Hunter
For sentimentality's sake I'd have liked Volvo to go back home but the bottom line is there have been better choices for the money for years.
Ford, a brand that I will consider buying next time I need a truck, sold a branch (Volvo) that I'd never consider buying, to a country that is an emerging giant so Ford can keep its bottom line solvent.
Just a good business decision by an old established American company. Those that object can voice their reaction with their $$ and not buy another Volvo. And we have a stronger American company for it.
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Dave Shannon Durango, CO '67 1800s '88-240 '01 Wrangler '06 F250 Diesel 4X4
It's far too late to get all fired up about stuff from China and Mexico and other low-wage countries that turn a blind eye to worker rights, safety, and environmental damage, for the right price. The time for outrage and pitchforks was 30 years ago. You (generic "you", not, you know, you) started this by demanding lower prices for everything and covering your eyes as towns across America withered and died so you could have a cheap TV, cheap furniture, cheap clothing, shoes, dishwashers, tires, whatever. Corporate elites dropped the social contract decades ago in favor of bigger pay packages, golden parachutes, upwards-failing, ginormous bonuses, and "enhancing shareholder value" by dropping steady dividends and inflating share prices. That works, until it doesn't.
There's nothing wrong with profit, nor growth. There's something wrong with elites at the top demanding a bigger profit/ROI at the expense of your job, your community, your way of life, while telling you that it's good for the country, happy elites means happy proles, etc. This is not a left/right issue. It affects us all. I mean, 30 years ago a CEO made, what, $250,000 at most? The CEO of my employer made $40 million this year, all told. Isn't that enough? No, it's never enough for the elites. This is what we have become. Malignant greed sold as "growth", and we bought it hoping a few coins would drop as the guys at the top laughed all the way to the bank. A steady rate of return was too boring for the money boys; goose them numbers and close those plants! Gotta get the stock price up 25% this year so the C-suite can get their bonus! So criminally short-sighted.
I'm sure the shiny New Economy of selling each other hamburgers and pieces of paper and "services" is as viable as making things... oh wait.
In a vain attempt to make this thread relevant to the Volvo 240 line, I can only think that few folks in this forum would find any problem with the Chinese buying or remaking tooling to start churning out Volvo 240s again. It's a pipe dream--it will never happen--but I'm using that dream as a vehicle to help my fellow brickheads to overcome their anti-China bias and see things in a different light.
I bet at least 80% of the various electrons involved in all the computing mass used to lurk/post/support/administer the Brickboard, and the internet as a whole, have origins in China.
I'm an American and I'm not terribly pleased with how we're managing our own economy, but the last thing I'm going to do is point the finger at China and say it's their fault--because it isn't, in my opinion. I want ownership of the problem, I want to help fix it, and I want credit when things are getting better.
Volvo should go back to their own, start small then build up. Why couldnt they do that? Chinese, like they make anything good all they do is copy stuff.
Volvo can't go back to their own, start small and build up. When they sold the company they also sold the name. Unless a few guys want to start a car company in Sweden and call it Ovlov or something. Probably a long shot without government subsidies and they're about tapped out.
Fifty years ago the Japanese copied everything and the quality was lousy. Now it's pretty hard to beat a Toyota/Honda/Nissan. It wouldn't surprise me to see the Chinese come up with superior products in the future.
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1986 Volvo 245
Business people have been doing what's best for them from the beginning. Loyalty to products by the consumer is a rediculous notion if for no other reason than it's a one way street, ie they expect you to care about and love their products. They leave you with the IMPRESSION that they care about you, lol, come on, you really buy that? Who cares who owns Volvo? Volvo certainly didn't care when they either happily sold to Ford or was mismanaged enough that they allowed a competitor to buy them out. These things aren't about God and country. It's about BUSINESS, PROFIT and it always has been.
"Why isn't anyone talking about Ford Selling Volvo to the Chines?" We don't care.
Well with this bunch, especially the group that posts over in the opinion forum, profit is the watchword of the Conservative Right, and most of them are left leaning, and hate words like that.
Well then no need to throw the word around over there, if they are to the left they will already be angry about something anyway. Probably rabbling for more regulation, more interference, more entitlements, more taxes, less personal responsibilty for themselves, and of course as always a piece of what others have earned.
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David Hunter
Wow... Did Glenn Beck or Keith Obermann hand you your prefabricated opinion?
I'm sure all the good hardworking *true* christian Americans with their quaint but morally-correct opinions from the thriving small towns of America are just up in arms about all their hard-earned small business tax dollars flowing to those masses of lazy ignorant latte-sipping, bleeding-heart evolutionist, globally-warmed liberal whiners in the rotten big cities of America. If only they would just work harder and stop complaining, everything would be okay in this country.
If everything were just put like it was in the 1950s we could all just stay in our proper places and pretend that there is nothing wrong anywhere with anything. After all profit is king and nothing we do in this world matters.
I guess Volvo is just another brand name to be consumed like a big mac.
Yeah, this ought to be moved to the opinions section.
Wow, such anger, where does that all come from? Off to the opinions forum for you.
Thanks but I formed my own opinions over the years, if Beck and others agree that's fine. Growing up and living in several other countries I have seen what socialism can do to a people. I really don't think Americans will adapt very well to it.
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David Hunter
"For the life of me, I can't understand what makes some of them tick."
That cuts both ways.
What seems obvious to one will seem ridiculous to another.
I'm convinced that if you take any social principle to an extreme you'll get bad results. We already tried a much more "free" and unregulated economy than what we've been used to - right up to October 1929. The Communists tried extreme socialism; that failed too. Knowledgeable people predicted both failures but that had no effect.
Hopefully we'll find ways to take what's best from all known systems and employ it when needed. To quote from another system that's occasionally been taken to extremes: "to every thing there is a season".
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Sven: '89 245 NA, 951 ECU, expanded air dam, forward belly pan reaches oem belly pan, airbox heater upgraded, E-fan, 205/65-15 at 50 psi, IPD sways, no a/c-p/s belt, E-Codes, amber front corner reflectors, aero front face, quad horns, tach, small clock.
1. our leadership elites off shored most of our manufacturing jobs and we allowed it
2. our leadership elites sold the bogus idea of globalization to us and persuaded us we could stop making things and become a service economy..doing each others laundry......and we allowed it.......where has it gotten us?
3. our leadership elites bought the congress for the past 30 years so various kinds of tax and other laws would be passed to make... making things here prohibitive and non competitive... making off shoring easier and we allowed it
4. our leadership elites sold to us the absurd nonsensical idea you can spend your way out of trouble by increasing consumption and going into debt and our math challenged populace believed them and went along.
the only ones who have benefited from the above 4 trends are the elites.....the owners of massive excess capital.......who moved it around where the returns were greatest...........and when they screwed up and blew themselves up from greed the same bought and paid for congress and executive bailed them out with whats left of our capital. these are indisputable mathematical facts. the only thing china did and i am surmising because i do not know for sure is in 2008 when the bubble finally imploded they demanded the fed reserve repurchase all the fraudulently sold mortgage and agency (fanny and freddie) real estate backed debt sold to them by wall street or they would dump their us t bonds enmasse and implode the usa economy. the fed imo bought back all the garbage mortgage backed securities ...MBS.. and now hold them on their balance sheet where their fester as real estate continues its reversion to the mean line trend. the facts are no one can really afford to buy a house which is more than 3 times annual income. this is an historical fact long understood by all bankers and home owners until the past 10 years ......when the idea that times were different got sold to people. in mathematics times are always the same.
china did none of these things, china is not responsible for our plight. look to your elected officials, business elites and wall street and in the mirror for believing all their bullshit in the first place.
everyone of us here on this forum had/s grandparents or even parents who survived the great depression, lived within their means and bought what they wanted when they had the money not before. as a nation and a person you can't go broke living within your means. china did not do this to us...we did by believing the fairy tales sold to us by our elites.... one day at a time.
you can not fix what's broke without getting to the core of the problem. we all surely know that on this forum.
we will as a nation sort this all out, but not before we go through the fire and cram down... voluntarilly or not.... the excess bad debt festering in the system which can no longer be serviced by real income. the math doesn't lie and doesn't care whether we believe it to be true or not. as a nation we have hit the debt wall of max debt. if we stop and cram it down in time maybe we can save whats left of our government and political way of life. if we don't and time has either run out or very shortly will then with the cram down in unsupportable debt will also go our political system, way of life and possibly even our national geography as we have come to know it.
Why would you care who owns Volvo? Did you purchase yours new, or as an old car with a bunch of miles on the odometer? If you are buying a new one, then it would and should make a difference, otherwise, in the course of things, it just does not matter. I bought mine new. Ford did not own Volvo then. I could have bought a new one after Ford bought Volvo out, but chose not to. I thought that the quality had slipped significantly. Maybe Geely can turn Volvo around. Let's hope so. Otherwise, when my 245 finally wears to the point that it's not worth repairing, I'll buy a new Toyota. They do build quality into their product.
Why should I care? You vote with your money. That's what matters. If you want to see something change for the better don't subsidize the guys in power. A Volvo will not last forever. you will eventually have to buy something newer - if only to burn whatever fuel we'll be using in the future.
Don't tell me you have never wanted to buy a brand new, well-engineered Volvo with under 200k on the odometer. If you do that now, it will be handing more cash to the Chinese so they can flat-out steal more and copy more, and build up more to take out Taiwan, crush the life out of Tibet and fill this world with so many people, that we can't possibly feed them all.
Never forget that Uncle Mao is responsible for the deaths of more people than Stalin and Pol Pot combined.
And our beloved Volvo will get to be a part of it all.
Volvo was about quality and the appreciation of quality. It *was* about more than a catchy slogan giving lip-service to safety.
It's awfully late in the game to be drawing a line in the sand about Chinese products. Cars are just the tip of the manufacturing iceberg. Most people really haven't cared while the rest of the manufacturing base got taken over by the Chinese, just now a little bit of outrage as the last bit slips under.
Meanwhile, I think Chinese cars will slip into the marketplace and, after a period of adjustment, meet marketplace acceptance. Just as the Japanese were once jokes, but now aren't, and the Koreans were more recently jokes and now aren't.
There's nothing inherent about China that prevents them from making quality products. It's just that generally the buyers of the widgets they make are more interested in a super low price than quality. However, when high quality is desired, they can do that too, and still at a price point no one else can match.
And in any case, I really sincerely doubt you'll see many changes at Volvo. Geely has said they will leave them independently managed in Sweden. You have to give them some credit for having some business sense.
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'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)
I've no doubt that a Chinese company can make a quality product if proper regs are in place. But never forget this: China is not a Democracy, S. Korea and Japan are.
We used to think Capitalism went hand-in-hand with Democracy. Over the last 25 years, China has demonstrated that you can maintain a totalitarian government if you let the people have a little money along with the the cell phones and cars. China had over a 5th of world's population, and even now they have managed to censor the internet.
The Chinese government is going to have to change significantly before I *ever* give over any money for a new Volvo.
If Ford couldn't make Volvo better - and quality suffered, why should we think China could do better -given what we have seen?
we are not a democracy, we were not setup in 1789 to be a democracy. the founding fathers feared democracy greatly calling it mob rule.
we were setup as a republic which failed under lincoln when he refused to allow the southern states to secede which was their constitutional right. freeing slaves is a convienent historic fiction as the cause.
from just before lincolns time an empire began to take shape:
ask the mexicans in what became texas 1845
or the filipinos in 1890's
or the hawaiian nation in the 1880-1900
and the countless other places we have meddled to make it safe for citibank or united fruit or standard oil of new jersey..exxon to you.
if you really want to learn the real facts do a google on twice won congressional medal of honor winner .....general smedley butler.
believing in myths are fine just as long as they don't harm your real life and real well being
we have been a full fledged empire........not a republic or even a democracy since trumans national security act of 1948 when the bulk of the usa army/military was NOT DISBANDED as it HAD BEEN after every other war we had ever fought.
once that occurred it was only a matter of time until the military would effectively take over the economy. and voila.........here we are!!
the greatest democratizing force the world has EVER seen is the internet and it is bringing REAL democracy to every corner it touches. why do you thing the chinese government is so damn fearful of it. because it dissolves the force which allow the elites and the 'ACTIONS to remain hidden from the rest of us.
the internet is bringing real democracy everywhere even to america.
Thanks for the history lesson and a different perspective on our nation's history.
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Mike F - 1984 244 DL - 285,000 miles Original engine, transmission, drive train, starter Undergoing reconstructive surgery with POR-15
The issue here is spiritual and economic in the basest sense. These cars represent something to us, as they have to the generations past. They represent the kind of independence that we as Americans and Volvo owners have always been prideful of: a spirit of cooperation, zaniness, techno-wizardry, a kind of thumbing our noses at the big boys who take our money and run. A little bit of zaniness and a brilliant spot of engineering by the Swedes has gone a long way. But the jig, at least for Americans, is up. When the big boys at our auto companies chopped away at the unions and our banks lined up at the chow line to give our money to each other, we were cooked. American cars, homeowners, small businesses, small farmers, and anyone else with an original idea became casualties, while a few guys made off with millions. I think the sale by Ford ia depressing news. It shows how powerless we are. It shows a lack of foresight on Ford's part. Any country with China's terrible human rights record doesn't deserve to build cars that will be sold here -- to a nation that has a good 200,000 of its young fighting wars to, among other things, free up oil for the very manufactuers who will sell us these new and "improved" Volvos in the first place. It doesn't make sense to me.
"Any country with China's terrible human rights record doesn't deserve to build cars that will be sold here -- to a nation that has a good 200,000 of its young fighting wars to, among other things, free up oil for the very manufactuers who will sell us these new and "improved" Volvos in the first place. It doesn't make sense to me."
Nothing new , one could have bought Ford instead of Volvo if owning company was of concern and as far as Chinese is concerned you may not have opened your computer lately. Geely will probably keep the things as it is or try to better them if they bought the Volvo for right reasons.
Regards,
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DD-1990 240 DL SW M47II FI 3.1 234 K miles
Just a couple facts about Geely - they already plan to introduce a vehicle or more into the US. The company is private. The guy that started it is the son of a farmer who figured out how to build products people want to buy.
Driven a Ford lately? Seems like Ford took the Volvo innovations and drop them in a Ford. I expect that Geely will do the same.
As I looked at new, comparable vehicles, upscale Toyotas and Volvos will cost out about the same. Lexus is about 10K more and BMW is another 10K beyond Lexus. Of course, Lexus can have a very high price point.
At this time, I've own a 1990 240 with 275K on it, a good, solid car. I also bought a used 1985 240 - it was a money pit. My current Volvo project is a 142 with only 134K on it. It will be a nice car once it is rebuilt.
I also have purchased four Toyotas over my years as well as a VW Rabbit and a 70 Chevy.
Geely will have to go a long way for me to consider buying a new Volvo instead of a new Toyota. Perhaps Fu, the Geely owner, should put a Volvo plant in the US. I'd think about a new Volvo then if it was comparable in quality and safety innovations of today and tomorrow as the 1990 was when I bought.
My interest was drawn by the fact that two different American automakers bought two different Swedish auto makers...and neither could make it work. However I must say I'm happy that, at least for now, the make will stay alive. I know there has been a last minute reprieve for Saab, but in the end, GM will probably just shutter it like they did the other divisions. At least Volvo is still alive and kicking. I'd be willing to bet the Chinese succeed.
Yes, the Chinese government does a lot of things we don't like...
But this looks like an opportunity for Volvo to become something - or finally bite the dust.
Since Ford's had control of the company, the cars have been crappy and the quality has suffered. They've ridden out the "live safe" idea, but the cars have had dropping scores on safety, and I wouldn't be happy driving one.
Anyway, just because something is made in China, or the US doesn't make it good or bad quality. The company that produces it has control over the quality.
It's a gamble, and hopefully something worthwhile comes out of it, or they finally euthanize the sickly Volvo name.
And, maybe this should get moved to the opinions forum...?
-Will
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1990 740 Turbo, on its way to stock specs, maybe beyond
the chinese had the most advanced society on the planet for centuries until the 16th century when they went into a near 500 year decline.
what you see now is merely china returning to its historic place of innovation, successful commerce and power. china also has NO history of foreign or imperial conquest unlike other powers we could name.
in 20 years time they will make the very successful japanese appear to be 2nd rate.
the really sad part of this story is what we have done to ourselves or rather what we have allowed our "leaders" to do in our name to our nation.
As for the Chinese rapid recent technical and economic progress; yep, you can really make things happen if you strictly control the working population, quash basic rights, and don't worry about trashing the environment. In that sense, totalitarian states work "better". Democracies are much less efficient.
But to quote Churchill: "Democracy is the worst form of government - except for all others that have been tried."
It should be educational to see what becomes of Volvo under Chinese rule. They are not stupid businessmen, but their social orientation is so far off that of the Swedes, that things are bound to get interesting.
For my money, it doesn't matter who buys Volvo. The opportunity to have a well built car, regardless of origin, is appealing. If the Geely deal goes through, they'll have some readily available technology to use, some brand recognition,and a very hard time deciding with Ford who actually owns what proprietary trade secrets or developments. I don't think Volvos have been as solidly engineered and built since Ford bought them. But, they weren't making any money either. There may not be enough room in today's marketplace to have a company like Volvo once was.
What makes you think more OEM aftermarket parts will come from China? If they are made to OEM specs they can be made in any country. The market will demand whatever quality it wants and the retailers will supply it. That's just the way it works. If you want poor quality parts you will always be able to go out and find them, same for the best. Many parts for new European and American manufactured cars already come form China. The marketplace decides the quality, not China.
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David Hunter
Made in China is not necessarily bad. It really depends on the quality control. I buy a lot of LL Bean stuff, and most of it is made in China. But, with that LL Bean label, I have been completely satisfied. The stuff is top notch and performs admirably. Of course, the LL Bean stuff is small scale compared to an automobile!
really. you want the people who made this car putting a volvo emblem on it?
Yeah, maybe Volvo will make that car safer, but until China stops executing political prisoners, selling human organs, polluting the hell out of the environment, and keeping their currency artificially low to remain the cheapest place on earth, it will never be okay for a real Volvo to be made there.
Anybody recall tiananmen square?
And no, I don't shop at Wal-mart. I avoid buying toys for my kid if they were made in China unless they've been tested thoroughly.
There's nothing in the air or water in China that stops them from making a quality product.
Look at Korea - with the benefit of looking at Japan's trtack from joke to world class producer of cars, they did it in far less time. If only Hyindai had just avoided bringing over their very first set of cars, they'd have a pretty solid reputation. Kia is selling cars left and right, with even fewer missteps. Chinese companies, I'm sure, watched and learned.
As for them buying Volvo, does anyone really think theyur'e going to close down the Swedish factories and jsut start cranking out cheap replicas in Chinese factories? You have to give the Geely executives credit for some business sense, after all, they are the top car company in China. I'm sure they are aware as we are how the brand reputation of Volvo would react to such a move.
It will probably play out like Ford's ownership of Volvo did. Geely has said that Volvo will remain independent, and managed in Sweden. Like Ford did, Geely will probably be borrowing platforms from Volvo, not the other way around. Perhaps, again as with Ford, some of the low end cars will be swapped the other way around (C30/S40/V50 are all Mazda 3/Focus platform sharers).
I think the main reason most of us here don't care is because we've already been dropped from Volvo Car's business, they spun off 'classic' parts a long time ago, after Ford bought them. Even though the parts still say 'Geniune Volvo' they're made by an independent company. And few of us really go out and buy brand new volvo's anyhow, so does it really matter?
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'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)
First thing this morning, I searched the boards looking for discussion... none to be found.
My opinion then and now... I think this will be a good thing for Volvo. I think this will be a bad thing for Ford.
Volvo gets some money to work with, Ford loses some needed engineering.
Parts made wherever? Who cares.. parts are made in many worse places than China these days.
I'm not saying it's ideal, I'm just saying that it's not a bad thing. And, it's not gonna affect us RWD folks.. Volvo done away with us ages ago, left us to our own resources.
Right now 'Made in China" means a manufacturer went looking for the cheapest cost of production above all else. And it is still true that you get what you pay for (5th law of thermodynamics, right after There Is NO Free Lunch).
The Chinese are going to have to turn the same quality corner that the Japanese did in the 60s. Do you remember when 'Made in Japan' meant a cheap knock off ? Now Japanese cars, bikes, tools, etc. are on a par with European stuff. Too bad we are not making much of anything in the USofA anymore, that used to be the really good stuff. But to corporations, quality costs them money.
Our V70 is a nice car, but it could be a Honda for all I can tell. It is not very owner friendly. It was made after the point were they realized that service techs bill by the hour and no one works on their own cars anymore.
In the real world, 240s have been obsolete for 20 years or so. I'm hoping to find good OEM or aftermarket parts to keep mine running for another 20 years. I'm not so excited about having a fleet of parts cars parked in the grove.
Perhaps with China's ability to simplify design and operation will force the Volvo Technology Department to use Asian steel and bring back a Boxy Volvo?
Isn't this pseudo box look style making a comeback? has the used bar of soap finally DIED???????
The Chinese are demonized only from the older generations that were indoctrinated that the Red Flag and Communism were EVIL! Those same generations sent crappy designed American products to China to be manufactured so the standard coming from European and American countries would SEEM better. It has nothing to do with the government. Now that China has invested so much into Capitalist country's gambles they will be the new Enigma at the top of the food chain... America is no longer the supreme.
If anything, I trust that Swedish people are enthralled that their car is now gunna be ran by a socialist country that isn't all geared up that "Growth... at ALL costs!" is a better product. Finally, some new Volvos with integrity!
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'92 244 NOW w/ M47 (Hydra, turbo bars, bilstein, urethane bushings)
It's hard to talk about it....I'm sure Ford must be crying, taking a 4.5 billion dollar loss on the sale....I don't think the future is too bright for Volvo. Who's going to buy a Chinese Swedish car?
who really cares here on the 240 blog, a car volvo hasnt made in almost 17 yrs? And never will again. The Chinese are the top auto producers in the world now. Look what GM did to Saab! Ford is bailing on Volvo the same way. Swedish people must the ones that are really stoked!!!!
A non-volvo friend sent me the news along with a quip, "Looks like all your Volvo parts are going to be made in China now!" My response was "Methinks all MY Volvo parts have already been made."
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Art Benstein near Baltimore
The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.
Many laughed when small, funny looking cars appeared on U.S. streets in the early seventies. They were called Toyota and Honda. Like it or not, the Chinese are buying up the world's natural resources on many continents, and partnering with multi-national corporations to accelerate market dominance. The Volvo purchase follows that pattern.
What should concern Bricksters is the continuing supply of OEM parts for our decades-old cars. Many cars of mainstream brands are made obsolete because OEM parts are NLA. But that's no problem for Mr. Benstein, who remarked all the parts for his cars have already been made!
In 2005 I bought a Geely 50cc scooter which was powered by a Linhai (Chinese JV partner) Yamaha engine. It was a knockoff of the 2-stroke Yamaha Vino and had a CVT transmission. Quality was pretty good considering I bought it delivered from California for under $800 and it lasted as long as I needed it, and was easy to maintain. I rode that thing for 1,200 miles with nary a hiccup, and when I moved to Oregon from Virginia the new owner drove it another 3-4,000 before passing it on with nary an issue on his part. Of all mobility system manufacturers, Geely appears to be on the right track manufacturing reliable motor vehicles. They have taken baby steps and now they're starting to take larger leaps. I wish I had bought some of their stock. I am not sure that the Swedish over-engineering is there, but as the Chinese develop their consumer market, and demand quality for themselves as opposed to just engineering marginal levels of quality for a less demanding export market, the Volvo brand has the potential to be the luxury and quality marque that the Chinese market needs. I drive old Volvos because of their history, their reliability, and my familiarity with them. As sad as I am about manufacturing leaving the west and going west of Hawaii, I'm not angry at the Chinese for their ambitions for manufacturing quality motor vehicles, I'm more uspet at our industry efforts to outsource out of the west every bit of manufacturing and manufacturing technology. We can't just be R&D centers and manufacturing "centers of excellence" in the West when our entire manufacturing base is transitioning to another part of the globe - at least not forever. All we're doing is fattening the wallets of the leaders of these western mega-corporations and the Chinese. Capitalism has no allegiances to nations, it goes where the money flows and the markets are, and right now the fastest growing is China.
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