The Volvo 140 is the often overlooked parent of the extremely successful Volvo 240, with everything behind the rear doors pretty much the same between the two cars. I owned a very tired 144 for a brief period and I’ve always liked these things, so I photograph them when I spot them in wrecking yards. So far in this series, we’ve seen this ’68 142, this ’69 145, and this ’71 142. Today we’ve got a very clean-looking ’71 four-door, which I spotted in a Denver self-service yard last week. (Read More…)

Starting in January of 2014, consumers will be able to buy a real wagon again from Volvo. The brand will re-introduce the V60 “sports wagon”, with a lineup of 4, 5 and 6-cylinder turbocharged engines, with the 4-cylinder motors eventually filtering down to the rest of the lineup.

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I recently saw some teaser images of an all-new, fully-redesigned Volvo XC90. You may have seen them too. If you did, your reaction was probably fairly mild. Maybe you yawned and drank some coffee. Maybe you resumed scratching yourself just out of view of your boss. But me? I was consumed with pure horror.

Before we cover the reasons behind this, let’s back up a bit.

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Geely founder and chairman, Li Shufu

Last week we reported the Geely and Volvo, which is owned by the Chinese car company, will be jointly developing cars and there was speculation if those cars would be sold in America. Now Bloomberg reports that some of those cars will indeed be exported to the United States. That would achieve the goal of Geely chairman Li Shufu that he set when Geely first showed product at the 2006 NAIAS in Detroit. At the same time, Volvo dealers in the U.S. and the company’s American sales unit have been trying to get more Swedish made Volvos shipped here.

Gui Shengyue, current CEO of Geely, said in an interview last week, “Our acquisition of Volvo enhanced our image and overseas consumers are seeing us as an international company. Our deliveries in U.S. and Europe will be banking on those jointly developed models.” (Read More…)

Pilot production begins at Volvo’s Chengdu plant in China

Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd., owned by the same Chinese company that bought Volvo Cars in 2010, announced that it will soon start developing cars jointly with the Swedish company. The cars will be intended for the Chinese and export markets and will go on sale in 2015. Geely has ambitions to be China’s largest car exporter. Working jointly with Volvo is seen as giving Geely products some of Volvo’s reputation for safety and reliability.

“We have entered into actual research and development stage and I believe we can see the new product in the year after next,” said Geely Chief Executive Officer Gui Sheng Yue yesterday in Hong Kong.

Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., bought Volvo from Ford for $1.8 billion and last year the two companies signed a memorandum to “leverage its full access” to technology to develop vehicles. Earlier this year, Volvo announced that it was going to build a joint R&D center with Geely in Gothenburg. Volvo has also started assembling test builds at its first factory in China, in Chengdu, which will have an annual capacity of 120,000 cars.

Volvo Cars also announced today that it has received approval from the Chinese national government to build two more factories in China. The assembly plant in Daqing, in northeast China, will have a capacity of 80,000 units a year and is hoped to be fully operational some time next year. The facility in Zhangjiakou will be an engine plant and it will supply the Chengdu assembly operation where actual production will begin in Q4 2013. The two assembly plants are not expected to reach capacity for a few years.

Stefan Jacoby, whose most recent job was CEO of Volvo, has been hired by General Motors to head their international operations. Jacoby replaces Tim Lee who is slated to become chairman of GM China as that unit is split off from the rest of GM International. Lee will continue to head global manufacturing for the Detroit based automaker. The business unit that Jacoby will be running will still have operations in more than 100 markets in Africa, Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

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Let’s talk about Volvo. You know Volvo. It’s your favorite Swedish brand. It’s my favorite Swedish brand. It’s everyone’s favorite Swedish brand, except for 13-year-old boys who are still holding out hope that the local rich guy will buy a Koenigsegg and bring it to Cars and Coffee.

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What you’re looking at here is

1. A big “F U” to CAFE regulations
2. Very likely the next vehicle my parents buy

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Everybody loves the Volvo Amazon, including me, and so it’s saddening to see an early example heading to The Crusher. The truth is that non-perfect Amazons (even two-doors) just aren’t worth much these days, so one with rust and/or major body damage usually gets crushed. (Read More…)

The internet is abuzz with Volvo’s newest You Tube video of an autonomous self-parking car. The website Motorauthority is even going so far as say this feature will be offered on the upcoming 2015 XC90.

The system, by the way, is not truly autonomous in the sense that your car will wander around seeking a spot until it finds one. It will, rather, work with specific parking garages set up with an interface that will guide the car to open parking places. An in-car system will notify the driver if the service is available and if there is an available space. Sensors in the car will allow the vehicle to interact with other non-autonomous cars and people.

Naturally this whole thing adds further fuel to the fire of autonomous cars and the regulatory implications of a vehicle operating without a licensed driver behind the wheel. In this author’s opinion, Volvo is clearly pushing the envelope if they plan on including this feature on a vehicle in the next few years. Likely this system will first see operation in large parking facilities located on private property to avoid the various legal issues that are sure to crop up. Still, the future must start somewhere and, as I have said before, I welcome the better, brighter future our new robot masters are set to deliver.

Since I’ve built (and daily-driven) what I consider to be an art car, I’m not against the concept of an art car. The problem is that you get 100 random-beater-with-army-men-hot-glued-all-over art cars for every brilliant Sashimi Tabernacle Choir. Because affixing random crap all over a cheap car is an accepted route to a certain segment of San Francisco Bay Area artistic circles, I’ve found a fair number of these things in Northern California wrecking yards. Here’s the first turbocharged art car I’ve seen in my travels. (Read More…)

With Volvo in Chinese hands, with a new Volvo plant in Chengdu “more or less completed,” and a second assembly plant in Daqing to come online in late 2014, there have been reports in Europe that Volvos may soon come from China instead from Sweden.  Not true,  Volvo’s  production chief Lars Wrebo told Automobilwoche [sub].  However, “other markets” than Europe could get the Made-in-China Volvos. (Read More…)

In a Northern California self-service wrecking yard not far from the one in which I found the Volvo 262C Bertone Coupe, I found an example of a first-year Volvo 240 wagon. The 240 didn’t change much during its near-two-decade run, but the very early ones stand out in this setting. (Read More…)

Since we had an extremely rare 1979 Junkyard Find yesterday (a Volkswagen Dasher Diesel), let’s have another today. This is the first time I’ve found a genuine Volvo 262C Bertone Coupe in a wrecking yard (I have seen the occasional Volvo 780 Bertone Coupe), and it happened during the same trip to California that gave us the Dasher Diesel. Let’s admire this fine example of Italo-Swedish design! (Read More…)

Volvo’s global sales are on a downward trajectory. The Geely-owned Swedish marker saw its 2012 global sales drop 6%. In the first four months of the year, sales were down 6.4 percent. Two new factories in China are supposed to bring the turn-around, a feature in Reuters says. (Read More…)