Consider what will happen to the ownership experience of people who own Volvo’s when the deal happens. The growing pains that the Chinese start going through will lead to reduced values, supply chain interruptions, parts problems, etc.

Unless the new owners are REALLY careful not to upset the cart, these things will happen. OTOH, they need to upset the cart to turn the companies around.

I am sure I will hear from Bertel on this one, but part of the problem will be the perception of Chinese ownership. And, please, don’t give me India and Tata as a response. The Indians are not the chinese. There are not thousands of people around the US who own Indian manufactured engines for which they simply can’t get parts even if they wanted to bother to fix what will break again in a week.

Had Ford engineered the Explorer properly and not encouraged the under inflation of the tires they would not have had that problem. It is mismanagement like this that has cost them a lot of money and credibility with consumers.

They’re still replacing the prone-to-spontaneous combusting cruise control units in their trucks – that’s not safe to me. I do not equate Ford cars or trucks as safer than their domestic competition or anything foreign for that matter. And there’s the issue with the fuel tanks in the Grand Marquis/Crown Vic that they refused to fix but would rather sell you an upgrade for safety that is well known now.

Ford has mismanaged brands and quality for years. Things are starting to look up now, but it’s way too late.

I still find it funny though that VW didn’t check the small print on what exactly they were buying…

PAG and the acquisition of so many of those brands was simply a play to increase margins. Volvo, Jaguar, Range Rover, Aston Martin all should have made big profit margins for them but when you don’t have any money to re-invest in these companies, you eventually find yourself making compromise decisions that lead to mediocre products instead of inventive, ground-breaking automobiles.

I believe that if the Firestone-Explorer rollover cases had never occurred, and we had the generally strong, robust economy we had during the 90’s, the PAG strategy could have worked. Ford would have made huge profit margins on the PAG brands if only they could have spent more money on PAG R&D…Lincoln would be thought of much like you think of Cadillac today, probably with even more brand cache’. It was a real shame, some of those cars would have been great.

It’s easy to retrospectively quarterback Ford’s buying spree, but I’d agree that it was a fundamentally flawed idea. Ford was trying to emulate GM. As Toyota and Honda have subsequently shown, you don’t need to buy a bunch of brands to make inroads in the premium markets — you need good products. Ford instead bought a whole lot of distracting problems.

If one wants to pinpoint a key implementation mistake, I would say that it was Ford’s vastly overambitious sale targets for PAG. This was most apparent with the X Type. Even if that car had more exclusivity Ford had no hope of coming anywhere close to achieving its aggressive sales targets. Ford’s lack of patience killed its aspirations. Again, Toyota and Honda didn’t make that mistake. They grew their luxury brands in a more orderly way.

I’ve read, that even Jürgen Schrempp called BMW headquarters in order to congratulate them on the deal and for sticking it for Volkswagen.

I guess this also shows that Stuttgart hates Wolfsburg more than Munich…maybe there is a future for a BMW/Mercedes alliance after all ;)

I think the deal was something like, anything bigger than vans goes to Volvo Trucks, anything smaller goes to Volvo Cars. Volvo Cars is now owned buy Ford, but could be sold. Therefore, it is most likely that the deal will continue as is, even with a new owner of Volvo Cars. Neither Ford nor Volvo Trucks would want that deal to change, and I think they would have to deal with that issue properly before Volvo Cars would be sold off.

Volvo Trademark Holding Aktiebolag
c/o AB Volvo, Göteborg, Sweden, 405 08

That also applies to the all-important Class 14 (”Vehicles, including cars, vans, sport-utility vehicles (including golf carts), buses, trucks, tractor units/prime movers, on and off road vehicles/dump trucks and parts …”)

Keep in mind that Volvo trucks and Volvo cars are separate, so they must share the mark. How, depends on the licensing agreement. A contract can be written that the license is assignable or non-assignable …

One would think that with the Rolls-Royce and Rover debacles, people now are sufficiently sensitized to these issues and won’t again buy a car factory without the proper brand attached.

As I see it, the problem was a lack of focus, brand dilution, and lack of investments. But the idea of an umbrella group for the premium brands wasn’t fundamentally wrong.

Jaguar X-Type was a bad idea, wrongfully executed at that. The S-Type withered on the vine for far too long. The Aston Martin brand had to cut itself loose to gain money to develop the Rapide, because Ford didn’t want to spend the money. Land Rover LR3 was *this* close to become an Explorer clone. And Volvo has been giving it away to almost the entire mid-range line-up at Ford.

Had Jaguar been stronger if the X-type hadn’t come true? Or if it had been better executed? Had Volvo been stronger if they had developed an S60 replacement some years ago? If Ford had stayed true to the idea of PAG, had the outcome been any different? Now we’ll never know…

Who owns the brand Volvo? Can it be sold by Ford if a Swedish truck maker owns the brand? Or is Ford only a licensee of the brand name?
And what is the value of Volvo without the brand name?

(SAAB is also a Swedish company not directly related to the GM licensed car manufacturing part)

There was nothing fundamentally wrong with the PAG-group. It just didn’t work as planned.

There was nothing fundamentally wrong with the Maginot-Line. It just didn’t work as planned. Sorry, Ingvar, the idea may have been worthy, but that matters little if the execution is asshat.

Easy. They wouldn’t be in this mess. It was when Nasser went on a crazed spending spree buying up European luxury brands and stock in dot-com companies that lead to Ford falling into its sea of red ink. When the dot-com bubble burst, so did Ford.

Believe it or not, I think that Nasser was a worse leader than Rick Wagoner.

Nasser was what he was, and he was just an employee. The real responsibility rests with Bill Ford Sr. and Jr. From what I’ve read it was Sr. who was strong for the disastrous foray into the upscale foreign crap. Where might Ford be today without the waste of billions and diversion of attention from their core brands?

@Droid: Not skilled at running a company like Volvo? SAIC has started Chinese mass motorization with VW more than 20 years ago. Their JV with GM runs excellent. If someone can make tons of money selling Buicks, he’s a genius in my book.

All: The only companies for which buying the likes of Volvo, Saab, Saturn et al would make sense are in China, and maybe in India. India is in trouble. Tata is a steel company, and steel is in the toilet. Prices at 1994 levels. Tata is in deep doodoo: http://profit.ndtv.com/2008/12/05004404/2008-A-year-Tata-would-like-t.html The only place where they have money is in China. They desperately need an established brand to successfully export their cars. North America and Europe don’t let Chinese brands in. They have worked with the Chinese for ages, they know what they can do. They sold them their technology. They trained them in building the identical cars as in NA and EU. If SAIC buys Volvo, they can export Volvos the next day. The cars have certification in the US and Europe. Same for the other brands. Would you buy a Mexican car? You do, when it says Chevy,Ford, Nissan, Toyota, Honda, or Volkswagen on it.

Big picture: In the long run, China wants its JV partners out. Can’t nationalize them, this ain’t Russia or Nicaragua. When they are as cheap as they are now, only an idiot wouldn’t buy them.

Ford should aim for at least $2.4 billion to recoup the write-down that they incurred earlier this year because Volvo was sucking wind. If they can get more, fine, but that should at least be their starting point. I’d like to see Hyundai buy Volvo, to be honest. Even though SAIC is one of the better Chinese automakers, they still haven’t shown much in the way of being skilled at running a company like Volvo. Hyundai at least knows how to do things right, and already has a good grasp of the variety of markets throughout the world.

Something just dawned on me as well; with the sale of Volvo, the entire legacy of Jacques Nasser will have been dismantled. None of the cockamamie organizations that he built up (PAG, etc) will be left.