It's Official: Ford Aims to Sell Volvo by the End of the Year and Not to Volvo
In an interview with Bloomberg, Ford’s European CEO, John Fleming, said that The Blue Oval Boyz aim to sell their Volvo-shaped money pit by the end of this year. More importantly, they have no intentions in keeping any remaining stake in their money-losing Swedish subdivision: “it has not even been considered.” Fleming also confirmed that Ford’s negotiating with “a number of parties” about the sale. Need they mention any names? Ford is looking for $2 billion for the moribund brand—less then a third of what The Glass House Gang paid for Volvo way back in 1999. Not to mention billions more spent in a hugely unsuccessful attempt to take the brand up market. “It’s not the global economic downfall that has sparked the decision to sell Volvo,” Fleming said, without dwelling on Ford’s patently inglorious management. “We’ve been in a process of separating Volvo and Ford for a year already.”
Meanwhile, the Swedish press reports that former parent company Volvo AB has dismissed rumors that they have any interest in participating in a deal to buy Volvo’s passenger car division.
That said, Volvo AB owns 50 percent of the copyright to the Volvo name; they’re only interested in protecting their good name (no Chinese takeaway for you kamrat). “It is only natural that the interested buyers contact us in this regard,” says Mårten Wikforss, chief of press at Volvo AB to Swedish newsaggency TT.
Meanwhile, hard times in the truck world. e24.se reports that Volvo AB has reported a 54 percent reduced turnover in their truck and heavy goods vehicle (HGV) sales, comparing July this year to July 2008.
There might be a connection there . . . .
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Volvo can be sold for 2 billion. Lincoln would cost money to get rid of.
What we're missing here is that Volvos actually sold pretty well until the last couple of years; the decline is actually pretty recent. They made two critical boo-boos: 1) Holding on to models too long. The last-gen S80 actually sold well for quite a few years, but they didn't so much as facelift it for like nine years, so the last couple years of its run found it a dead model walking. Same for the S60. Then, when they introduced the redesigned S80, it has all the personality of an ATM machine - a total yawn and a bomb. At least the previous-gen S80 and S60 had personality. And now they're running the XC90 into the ground. Don't even get me started on the boxy old RWD models. 2) Safety became a given in even the cheapest cars, taking away their one traditional selling point in the marketplace, and Volvo couldn't find anything to replace it with. Sad...but that's how the cookie crumbles.