Forgive me father for I have sinned

[Chris P.]

But the 480 is a great Dutch design!

[uwe]

It was pretty - let's leave it at that!!!  Did turn me into a faithful Volvo customer though. I've been driving Volvos for a quarter of a century now.

[Lightyear]

It was pretty - let's leave it at that!!!  Did turn me into a faithful Volvo customer though. I've been driving Volvos for a quarter of a century now.

Including the Chinese one's? 

[Dave W]

Including the Chinese one's? 

Are the Chinese ones exported to Europe? I don't think so.

[uwe]

I'm not sure that Chinese Volvos are yet being produced and if they were, I'd have no issue driving one.



I believe they are building plants there though and that initial plans are to use Chinese Volvos only for the domestic market there, but in a globalized world that of course doesn't make much sense in the long run.

When Ford took over Volvo Cars (as opposed to Volvo Trucks which remained in Swedish hands) in 2000, everyone said this is the end, quality will decline. It didn't, it actually improved. Yes, they stuck in Ford parts, but they stuck in late generation parts that had been tested a zillion times whereas the Volvo of old was sometimes stuck with a part that didn't quite work, yet the laws of scale could not justify a new, better design. Ford had a wealth of parts to choose from and generally picked the best for Volvo. It wasn't always oneway either:

"Volvo Group sold its car division Volvo Car Corporation to Ford Motor Company for $6.45 billion during 2000, it was placed within the Premier Automotive Group alongside Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin. Volvo engineering resources and components would be used in various Ford, Land Rover and Aston Martin products, with the second generation Land Rover Freelander designed on the same platform as the second generation Volvo S80. The Volvo T5 petrol engine was used in the Ford Focus ST and RS performance models, and Volvo's satellite navigation system was used on certain Aston Martin Vanquish, DB9 and V8 Vantage models."

Same thing with the Chinese takeover in 2010: My current V 70 is already from the "Chinese era", it has the best workmanship overall. My brother works at Volvo, he says the difference between Ford and the Chinese is that the former would coyly ask whether an individual expensive part could not sometimes be replaced by a cheaper one "almost as good", while the Chinese say: "If the best quality costs that much and BMW and Mercedes use it, we are not going to settle for anything of lesser quality.". Their plan is for Volvo to eat away at BMW's and Daimler's current Chinese market shares which is why one of the Chinese plants will be dedicated to long versions, a big thing in China's upmarket cars segment of larger sedans (no, I will absolutely not discuss average leg length of the Chinese population here, but they have eaten more meat in recent decades there, so I've heard!). There is hardly a market for that in either Europe or the US where 75% of the Volvo cars sold are station wagons as opposed to Volvo sedans, SUVs not even counted in.

For Volvo to survive as a brand in the long run, it will need to be embedded in the loving arms of something larger. Look what happened to Saab after GM's arms weren't so loving anymore (but Saab's demise cannot be put on GM alone, that company's narrow product line and "10-years-behind-the-technology-of-others"-stance had been asking for trouble long before the GM takeover).  In contrast, Ford gave Volvo its first SUV - and SUVs are now a mainstay of their portfolio (not that the XC 90 was a car to my taste - I had one once and quickly reverted from "that tank" back to station wagons, thank you, but it has a lot of fans).

Stop press: The 2016 follow-up to the V 70 station - it will be called V 90 -  might actually look something like this if this scale model that supposedly crept out from a Chinese factory is to be believed (the real models might then come from China too after all).



Not quite like that breathtaking study looked, but you can detect remnants of it ...



The slanted hatchback - something so far steadfastly refused by Volvo with their large stations - is a tribute to prevailing styling tastes, but to me a sheer waste of space. I sometimes need to fit in an 8x10 Ampeg fridge and a 1x18 subwoofer!!! Vertical right angle hatchbacks rule.

[Pilgrim]

GM had to work really hard to drive Saab into the ground! My daughter has a 2008 9.3 Aero V6 XWD Turbo, and it's a really excellent car. Not as fancy in the dashboard as the BMWs it competed against, but it has power all day, handles great, is comfortable, and for the three years she has been driving it, has been highly reliable and trouble-free.

This is a really good car that required a high level of incompetent management to kill. Until the last few months there were intermittent rumors that the Chinese owners would resurrect it as an electric vehicle, but those rumors seem to have died out.

[uwe]

" ... and it's a really excellent car ...."

True, but it's built on an Opel/GM platform (the Epsilon platform, also used for the Opel Vectra and in its time probably the best GM platform ever) and has all sorts of Opel ingredients in it (30%)! It also looks like Opels used to look, nothing wrong with that (remember that I come from an Opel family and was raised on GM money), just like there is nothing wrong with a Volvo with Ford parts. To give GM its credit, they tried long and hard to turn Saab into something that might come out at least even, but it was bought as a lossmaker and it continued to be one during the whole of GM's tenure (10 years, so they tried). BMW gave up on Rover much quicker.

Looking back, it was probably a mistake to relase your daughter's nice 9.3 initially only as a sedan, traditionally, Saab drivers are - like the Volvo guys - hatchback fans. GM fell for market research at the time that station wagons were being squeezed out of the market between "soccer-mom SUVs" and true sedans. They forgot the "bassplayers with large rigs"-constituency  (the large Volvo SUV, btw, offered less loading room than the large Volvo station wagons, but it has to be said that its rear passenger seats were extremely spacious, truly a travel car for four adults, you can't have it all).

I always loved the "black panel" function on Saabs. Silly, but cool. And a nod to their aircraft heritage.

[Pilgrim]

My daughter's has that black panel function (turn off the dash lights) and the coolest cupholder known to civilization. That Saab is one very well made, great-handling car.  There are some hard-to-service items, but that's hardly exclusive to Saab.

In 2008 and some previous years, they did make the 6.3 in a "Combi" (wagon) version, and the owners of those won't let go of them.  You could get the wagon in the V6/turbo Aero version as well.  Maybe that was too late, but wagons have been better sellers in Europe than in the US for a couple of decades now.

I'm the rebel in US terms with my 2008 6-speed manual BMW 328 x-drive wagon.  It's a blast to drive!

[nofi]

pilgrim, please buy more cars. we have seen your stuff too many times.

[Pilgrim]

I just hang onto them too long. Regrettable, but I seem to be able to keep them running.

Stick around for the traditional smoker shot in the back yard at Thanksgiving....

[uwe]

I never saw the point of all that space a sedan wastes opposed to a station wagon. There is also something appealingly basic and even archaic - form follows function - in the look of a hatchback, it's the truck driver in all of us! I've never owned a sedan in my life. Volkswagen Beetle doesn't count!!!

[Highlander]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCvSLKn6B7k   

[Dave W]

Worst car I ever owned by far was a 1974 Saab 99.

[Pilgrim]

My sister had a Gremlin for a few years. It was in contention for anyone's worst car. I will say that the engine and drivetrain were pretty solid, but the body was continually falling apart and accessories like the wiper motor were frequently non-functional. She drove the thing for at least two years with string tied to the driver's side wiper and routed around the door seal into the driver's area; the wipers would move down, but not back up - so she had to pull the string every time she needed the wipers to cycle again. My dad changed that vacuum-driven wiper motor at least twice, and none of them worked right.

[gearHed289]

Here's a picture of my car about to destroy a little import at Great Lakes Dragaway. 



Wait, what were we talking about again???