How Chinaã¢â‚¬â„¢s 36th-best Car Company Saved Volvo Review

These days, it's hard to imagine a company better positioned to take on Tesla than Geely-owned Volvo and Polestar. Volvo made headlines back in 2015 when it promised that all new Volvos would be electrified starting in 2019 and ruffled more feathers when it spun off its successful motorsports brand, Polestar, into a purely electrified operation machine line. Parent visitor Geely'southward Chinese heritage allows Volvo most unfettered access to the all-important Chinese marketplace and allows the company to do good from economies of scale – through the Geely, Lynk & Co., and Zeekr car lines – that information technology simply wouldn't be able to realize on its own.

Over the past 10-or-so years, the Swedish company – one time on the verge of extinction – has flourished, going from strength to strength. Ford looks absolutely ridiculous for having sold Volvo, now valued at more than $20 billion, to Geely for "just" $1.five billion (with Polestar going for another $20 billion, all on its own) back in 2010.

Sure, Ford wanted to fire-sale Volvo – but Ford wasn't the merely troubled American car company holding on to a respected Swedish car brand looking to make some fast greenbacks. With a push button hither and a nudge there, Geely could take bought Saab, instead.

THE Case FOR SAAB, 10 YEARS Later

Dorsum when Ford sold Volvo, information technology wasn't obvious that Geely was making a winning play. The bulk of Volvo sales were Mazda or Ford Focus-based cars like the S40 and C30, and the XC90, while solid, was already getting a scrap long in the tooth. Saab was in a like position, with its ain quirky graphic symbol getting watered downward by contemptuous, badge-engineered cash grabs similar the Saab 9-7x.

The biggest difference between the two, from where I sit, was the product funnel. Volvo had one upcoming automobile, actually, and that was the S60, underpinned by the European Ford Mondeo platform. That platform would too spawn the XC60 midsize SUV that would effectively carry the brand in the U.S. until the 2015/16 launch of the second-generation XC90.

Ane platform. A skillful platform, sure, but yet simply i – Saab, thank you to GM, had four. In add-on to the excellent simply brusque-lived Saab 9-5, they as well had the 9-3, and the nine-4 crossover, which was primed to capitalize on the crossover explosion that came in the 2010s. Finally, they had the concepts – most notably, the Saab 9-X Biohybrid.

This is where our automotive Sam Beckett steps in, pulling Chinese billionaire and Geely chairman Li Shufu aside and whispering that the time to come would exist all about hybrids and electrification.

"GM is losing money on every Saab they sell," you tell Li. "But things are not as they appear. GM doesn't know what it has – in another x years, GM'southward whole operation volition be worthless, and the only affair that will be of any value is their EV business concern. GM is even more than drastic for cash than Ford is, too – they'll take whatsoever lowball offering for Saab. You'll get your European make, and you might even get their EV patents at the same time, for less than the $ane.5 billion you're ready to spend on Volvo."

AHEAD OF ITS Time

Volvo'southward 2015 delivery to electrification seems prescient at present, simply information technology wasn't the obvious play back and so. In 2015, Volvo didn't have a single hybrid in its lineup, and had no real experience building electrified cars on its ain. Its showtime hybrid, the XC90 T8, wouldn't reach the U.S. until more than a year afterward.

In contrast, Saab first showed the 9-X Biohybrid at Geneva in 2008. Even at present, the 9-10 looks every bit similar a modernistic car, with a turbocharged four-cylinder engine backed up by a big electric battery. Sure, it's more of a big starter motor than a Tesla-esque bulldoze unit of measurement, but in 2009 or 'x it could have played very well, especially for a Scandinavian make looking for some green cred.

A few years down the road, with access to Geely'due south billions and the same kind of creative freedom Volvo has enjoyed? I tin can't imagine a world where the already first-class, concluding version of the Saab 9-5 didn't prosper. Or one where the 9-4x didn't sell, for that matter.

In the end, GM was willing to sell Saab for $74 1000000 cash and a bunch of promised shares to an upstart Dutch brand chosen Spyker that doesn't exist anymore. And even that paltry amount of greenbacks failed to materialize.

Saab lingers on in the periphery of automotive memory – "Built-in from Jets", sure, but somewhen relegated to the dustbin of history, forth with the EV1 and any real attempts from GM to take electrification mainstream and compete with Tesla and, dorsum then, the Prius.

WHAT WOULD SAAB LOOK LIKE TODAY

Saab, similar Volvo, is a Scandinavian company that held some deeply-rooted Scandinavian values. Assuming Mr. Beckett would have been successful in convincing Mr. Shufu to buy GM'southward EV business for $one.5 billion – heck, he could even license back the tech to them as needed! – Saab could have had hybrid models of its ix-three, 9-4x, and ix-five up and running past 2010, making it the beginning premium brand with a fully electrified lineup – optics that would exist hugely beneficial in 2020.

Imagining Saab's distinctive styling cues – certainly more distinctive than Volvo's, circa 2008-10 – on Geely's first-class platforms is like shooting fish in a barrel enough, too, and there would take been no shortage of smart Saab execs who would stand in the way of forging an alliance with China.

And then, why didn't it happen?

THE Problem IS Always GM

As early on as 2009, it seems like information technology could have. Geely seems to accept been denying interest in both companies right up until the point the bank check cleared at Ford. If you ask me, the trouble wasn't at Saab or Geely, information technology was at GM.

"GM never figured out how to integrate Saab, ultimately investing little in the brand while raiding it for technology like turbo engines and front end-cycle drive," said Martin Skold, who studies the machine manufacture at the Stockholm School of Economics.

Per-Erik Mohlin, a former president of Volvo Cars, put it more bluntly in an interview with the New York Times, maxim, "GM had no idea what to practise with Saab … I don't call back they had a clue what to do with a premium make."

Fast-forrard again to 2020, and even the one premium brand you'd recall GM could get a handle on, Cadillac, is shedding dealers left and correct, with more than 150 dealers opting for GM'southward $500,000 buyout instead of renovating their stores to line up with GM'due south vision for the brand.

Why? TTAC's illustrious one time-leader, the Great Jack Baruth, sees information technology every bit a matter of dealers mistrusting GM's vision for its remaining premium brand.

"And why not?" he asks, in one article. "Cadillac has been abusing its dealer trunk in egregious way since 1984. That's 36 years of having to sell FWD sedans against the Town Auto. Thirty-six years of engine problems from the 'HT4100' to the Northstar to whatever'due south going to happen with the Blackwing V-eight. 30-half dozen years of selling cars that have been punching bags for the automotive media; 36 years of confusing and frequently cocky-parodying nomenclature (see: the simultaneous dealership existence of the XT5 and XTS) that eradicated whatever disinterestedness the brand had. In that location was a four-twelvemonth "Lost Weekend," where Cadillac moved to New York and pretended to be a Zara shop."

He goes on, but the point is made. GM's superlative brass has been very much confused well-nigh what to do with premium brands for a long, long time – at least since they decided to put a Pontiac steering wheel in a Lotus Camaraderie, and peradventure fifty-fifty earlier. If we'd been there, then, we might have been able to save Saab, and do and so, so much more with GM'southward EV tech as well.

That's simply my take. What'due south yours? Did Geely do the correct thing when information technology bought Volvo Cars, or do you think it could have washed more with Saab and a few dozen EV1 patents? Gyre on downward to the comments and let usa know.

[Images: GM, Saab]

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Source: https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2021/12/quantum-leaps-geely-saves-saab-instead-of-volvo/

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