That was then, this is now. Oh wait; that's now too– at least according to our friends over at Autoblog. Scribe Dan Roth offers the testimonial upon hearing the news that Volvo's COO is spinning faster than a supersonic dradle. ""We want to continue to compete with Mercedes, BMW and Audi," Steven Armstrong, Volvo's COO tells Automotive News [sub]. "We're working to improve the premium-ness of the brand and our products." Shouldn't that be premiumnessosity? And who considers Volvo an alternative to a Merc, Bimmer or Audi? You know; other than Autoblog? Not U.S. consumers apparently. "Volvo sold 458,323 units worldwide last year, of which 106,213 were sold in the United States. Volvo's U.S. sales peaked at 139,067 units in 2004, but they are expected to fall to around 95,000 this year." While we await the Swedish brand's long-denied sale, we're left wondering about Roth's comprehension and sentence construction skills. "The possibility of building its cars in the United States might bring prices down [Ed: the possibility will bring prices down?] and allow better developed performance versions, versus the outclassed R models of the past," Roth contends. "The issue is not quite as high on the agenda as it was in January," Armstrong said.
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What will become of the shared platforms, such as the S40/Fusion/6, for example?
From autoblog,
“Volvo has a hard time competing head on with BMW, Audi and Mercedes. The cachet of the Swedish automaker is diminished compared to the Germans, and dynamically, Volvos tend to get schooled hard despite being good, capable drivers when taken alone.”
Seems like they agree with you.
And nitpicking grammar mistakes that 97% of Americans couldn’t pick out is the job of commenters, not competing websites.
Autoblog is far from perfect, but I don’t enjoy the us vs. them mentality that TTAC seems to be pushing. How about constructive criticism to help legitimize car websites in general?
Well, thanks for Dorf (“Ford spelled sideways is DORF”) Munchkinhead Company, Volvo CLOSED their North American factory in Halifax, Nova Scotia after Dorf bought them.
Stuuuupid move.
http://www.classicaldrives.com/50226711/a_famous_general_your_editor_and_volvo_have_something_in_common.php
Here’s a story written 11 years ago about the Maritime Provinces, including a reference to the fact that Volvo built cars in Halifax for both Canada and the Northeastern United States.
http://www.ijmc.com/moonlight/canada/9704/atlantic.htm
Looks like Dorf didn’t do well by the workers in Halifax, here’s an article about the closure of the plant at Christmastime 1998.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/1998/10/22/volvo981022a.html
Chery is considering buying Volvo. Seriously.
Forbes not entirely certain how the Chinese automaker will pull it off – but the pockets are deep thataways.
http://www.forbes.com/markets/2008/07/07/chery-ford-update-markets-equity-cx_vk_0707markets04.html
Volvo killed itself by chasing fashion and luxury, two things which are upside down from the Volvo brand image. Once upon a time Volvos really were for people who thought differently, but now … not so much.
Ditto seoultrain. The best at their game don’t snipe at the rest of the field. Chase the dream, not the competition RF.
As for Volvo, just another vital brand that has been drained of life by contact with Detroit. Hell, even Mercedes-Benz acquired a stink of death by associating with the state of Michigan.
–chuck
Don’t current volvos suffer from poor resale values and plagued are by reliability issues?
How to compete with Mercedes or BMW? Start with a good RWD platform. And have correctly-oriented V8. Maybe call it the S100. Just for starters.
“Don’t current volvos suffer from poor resale values and plagued are by reliability issues”
Yes and yes. The “exceptional durability” and “meticulous engineering” have been conspicuously absent in recent years. My friend with an S80 talks about it in much the same way one used to hear Jaguars referred to: “I love it when it isn’t in the shop sucking another $500 to $2000 out of my wallet”.
chuckgoolsbee
Ditto seoultrain. The best at their game don’t snipe at the rest of the field. Chase the dream, not the competition RF.
Part of defining the TTAC brand is to define who we aren’t. Call it negative campaigning, but it’s an important part of my job.
Sigh. Volvo’s got themselves all wrong. My V50 makes sense at 25K which is what I paid for it. At 32K (sticker) it loses out to the A4 avant in every imaginable way including safety and fuel economy. I remember in the 80’s all the Volvo families that started driving Toyotas and Subarus. Volvo may see Audi, BMW and Merc as their competition but they really are losing out to VW, Subaru, Honda and Toyota. What if they gave us the Escape hybrid drivetrain in any Volvo? Or one of their Euro spec actually efficient engines? Strip out some content, get prices down, tout the fact that they OWN the wagon format, be as green as they claim to be, and pledge it will happen…in 2010.
As a Volvo owner, reading that they want to take Volvo upscale makes me sad. Not as sad, however, as the thought of Volvo being sold to the Chinese.
My God we need a hail mary.
My Volvo had an $18k MSRP in 1984. That was a LOT of scratch in those days. OTOH, it’s still running. Can you say that about some modern Volvo 24 years from now?
For those of you who think Volvo has lost their way of reliability I beg to differ:
Volvos were never reliable.
My family had a 240 wagon back in the day before Volvo went upscale (which they did 17 years ago, guys…) , and although it was a ‘nice’ car in its solid feel, the damn thing was a lemon. For every story of a can’t-kill-it volvo there is, there’s a story like mine.
Volvo is a fine car and in the US is still “upscale,” although in other parts of the world they call it a “car”, much like the 3-series between us and them. It must suck to have a brand trying to go (further?) upscale when your parent company is trying to adopt you out.
Around 1998 a Subaru salesman told me that the demographic who “used to buy Volvos” were the ones Subaru went after. That year, Subaru sold 148,000 cars. Subaru is now selling roughly 190,000 cars per year in the US. The people I meet who own Subarus are the ones I would have associated with Volvo a few years ago; maybe Volvo’s upmarket push just made room for Subie to eat their lunch.
I bought a base model ’80 240 2-door in 1982 for the princely sum of $7995. Although the car had its reliability quirks (I was considering a Cavalier replacement in ’85 and a Reliant “America” in about ’87), but I decided to hold on to it. One big advantage was that it was easy to work on; the interior trim for example seemed to be held together mostly with Phillips screws.
Well, wouldn’t you know in its old age when it was no longer the primary vehicle, it became much more reliable. I used it as a commuter for years, and finally sold it in 2003 with 245K miles when the tin worm and electrical maladies (plus more vehicles in the stable than we needed) made me pull the plug.
BTW, how long do you think the Cavalier or K-car would have lasted? But I seriously doubt I’ll own another Volvo again — they moved too far from their roots.
BTW, how long do you think the Cavalier or K-car would have lasted? But I seriously doubt I’ll own another Volvo again — they moved too far from their roots.…
Can’t vouch for the Cav, but my 87 Reliant blew its head gasket at 253,000 miles. It too was showing signs of the tin worm. Not nearly as solid as a 240, either, but repairs, which were cheap and easy, seemed to be spaced at 70K miles apart. And, no I doubt there will ever be a Chrysler in my garage, nor a Volvo…
BTW isn’t it dreidel? Spell check says no, Google says yes…
“BTW, how long do you think the Cavalier or K-car would have lasted?”
Over on the Allpar.com forums there are plenty of “K” cars in all their derrivates with 100 and 200k miles on them. They even have a special forum for tech questions and do it yourself repairs for these cars. And was it TTAC or Autoblog that ran a story about a Cavalier car club? After all my years on this planet, I’ve come to realize that for any given car (well, maybe not Yugo), there are fans and admirers who get great results and mileage from their vehicles and disgruntled customers with tales of woe.
RF,
+1 on goolsbee.
TTAC and Autoblog don’t – at least in my world – don’t fill the same space in the online-auto-mo market.
AB is for quick hits. Updates. News blurbs and poorly thought through bloggifying.
TTAC, on the other hand is well done: the premium product. I spend time here (@TTAC), read good automotive writing and respond with thoughts not up to the level of the authors’.
In atomic terms, AB is AutoWeek and TTAC is at least the R&T of old when Henry N. Manney III was with us.
I don’t know what that does to your financial model, but in the online space, TTAC is what it is and shouldn’t – me thinks – sully itself by “Strunk & White-ing” AutoBlog.
RD
Re. Volvo.
I think that the market pretty clearly shows…
1. FWD cars are not premium cars
2. Fewer than 8 cylinders disqualifies a model from the “premium” ranks
3. A make with one or two models having 8+ cylinders and/or AWD whose sister models are 4’s or 6’s with FWD is not a premium make.
I guess that the business case for Volvo to check out here would be Acura.
It’s not just Volvo: the “premium” car niche has pretty much evapourated; squeezed between some very nice bread-and-butter cars on the low-end and the hair-shirt versions of the luxury marques. None of these players (Saab, Acura, Volvo, Volkswagen, Buick, Mercury) are doing well.
It’s kind of sad, really, but what can you do? An S60 or 9-3 isn’t good enough to knock off a 3-Series or A4, and not sufficiently better than top-trim Accord or Highlander to justify the premium. At least Acura has reliability and VW demographics, and even they’re suffering. The others are dead brands walking.
About the only brand that’s managed to survive in this niche is Subaru (though Mazda is trying; Saturn seems to have failed) and it’s likely that they’ll suffer the same fate once they hit that magic “overpriced” point and people look at the dollar-vs-feature equation on a Legacy versus an Accord or Malibu.
Subaru is all over the place in terms of branding and the appeal of their products:
There are the Blue State Suburbanites who used to purchase Volvos.
The Impreza WRX and Sti that appeal to the younger “fast & furious” performance driving set. The Legacy GT also falls into this category.
Then you have the Gay & Lesbian community that likes their Outback Wagons and Foresters.
Then you have the people who live in the mountains who purchase them as they are the best value in AWD/4WD snow vehicles.
@ RedStapler:
“Then you have the people who live in the mountains who purchase them as they are the best value in AWD/4WD snow vehicles.”
Subaru had better watch it’s tail. Suzuki’s SX4 is all set to mop up the low-end AWD buyers.
We bought a brand new 960 in 1997 when they still looked kind of Euroboxy. The alternator failed at 65,000 miles which cost $800 to repair. Every time it went in for a scheduled service they found something that cost $600 to turn off the “service needed” light on the dash. We suffered through the payments. While selling it I talked to other Volvo drivers who told the same tales and yet – they wanted to buy another one. Best of luck and adios, we replaced it with a Ford Escape back when it was still cool to have an SUV.
Volvo has always made their bread and butter on the near-luxury side. What would now be seen as the $25k to $40k price range.
We can talk about image all we want. But what it really comes down to is the model vis-a-vis the competition. Volvo simply does not have the better product at the price ranges they are ‘asking’ for. I still believe that the deep discounts you can get at some dealerships make a few of their models worthy considerations… but a fellow who is shopping for a $25k will usually not delve into European cars that go for over $30k because the perceived gulf in price appears to large.
I still think Volvo would have been successful with a ‘Volvo 260’ based on the Taurus/Sable platform. Everything from the bulky styling to safety record to prior gen S80 chassis just oozed the foundation of a true Volvo. Unfortunately Ford did not see it that way, and now the marque rots under the delusional guise of ‘prestige’.
The corporate ‘profit perception’ and consumer ‘market perception’ of Volvo simply don’t mix.
“We bought a brand new 960 in 1997 when they still looked kind of Euroboxy. The alternator failed at 65,000 miles which cost $800 to repair. Every time it went in for a scheduled service they found something that cost $600 to turn off the “service needed” light on the dash.”
They are great cars… but folks who take it to a dealer will get absolutely fleeced… anyone and their dog can do most of the maintenance and repairs.
I bought a 95 Volvo 960 wagon for $1150 a few weeks ago it was probably the fifth or sixth I bought this past year. Out of all the models, the 960/V90/S90 seems to have the highest level of dealer maintenance from prior owners. One of my buys even went to the dealer 47 times for maintenance and repair needs. Couldn’t believe it. I like their ride and interior ergonomics especially but they do require a lot more upkeep than most other Volvos.
Go to Craigslist and do a search on used Volvos for sale. You’ll be amazed. On any day, you’ll see plenty north of 170,000 miles, with many pushing 200,000 and quite a few with quite a few more than that on the odometer. These are all cars good enough to sell.
On the other hand, I really don’t see all that many Toyotas for sale with that kind of mileage. I did buy a Toyota (1991 Celica ST — 1.6 liter four cylinder) myself in 1999 that had 212,000 on it — and was surprisingly solid. But I haven’t seen all that many since.
I do seem to see plenty of Nissan Maximas with high mileage holding up very well.
And then, of course, there’s my 1988 Olds Delta 88 with the 3800 V6 that still wasn’t burning a drop of oil when my brother, who obtained it from me as a hand-me-down, totaled it with about 215,000 miles on the odometer.
That 3800 V6’s performance was miles ahead (no pun intended…) of the Toyota 1.6 liter’s, which burned oil (lots of it) right up to the car’s death (culprit: T-bone) at 298,000 miles. And the oil conflagration reached blinding-blue-cloud-of-smoke levels at every start-up from 260,000 miles onward.
Just my observations…”sorry” if they don’t fit the new conventional wisdom…
@ RedStapler
I am so confused.
I am straight and drive a “fast and furious” Legacy GT (Spec. B, no less). But I also drove an Outback VDC for 3 years. Hmmmm!
No mountains here in Providence, but we do have some hills that are fun when it snows (I Pirelli Winter the Spec. B to increase the enjoyment).
I wonder which one of your profiles I fit? Maybe I just like dependable cars that are fun to drive and inexpensive to keep.
I do love women from that enchanted Greek Isle though. Maybe I’ll get myself a new Forester XT.
Great how profiling works ain’t it! Gotta love liberalism.
Move on!