Ford eyes Volvo sale; BMW interested

Ford eyes Volvo sale; BMW interested

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STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -- Loss-making Ford Motor Co. is planning to sell Swedish car maker Volvo, and German carmaker BMW could be a possible buyer, a Swedish newspaper said on Monday.

The Goteborgs Posten daily reported on its Web site that a source within Ford (Charts, Fortune 500) said BMW has been studying a possible purchase of Volvo.

The Financial Times also reported last Friday BMW was in informal talks to buy Volvo.

"We cannot comment on speculation, this is a question for our owner," said a spokeswoman for Volvo cars.

Ford bought Volvo in 1999 and it is now part of the U.S. company's Premier Automotive Group, including Jaguar and Land Rover.

Ford does not disclose results for its individual brands, but taken together its luxury line-up lost $327 million in 2006.

Merrill Lynch has said Ford could raise over $9 billion by selling its remaining luxury car brands.

Volvo Cars Chief Executive Fredrik Arp told Reuters in March that Ford was committed to keeping the Swedish car maker.

Reply to
Jim Higgins
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Darn you! I was just going to post a link (I would not have posted the whole article; that is against copyright law).

Anyway, although it makes sense, Ford might not have Volvo for sale or, if it does, they might not sell, e.g., they don't get enough money.

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff

At some point the Little Three are going to run out of items to take to the Pawn Shop.

Reply to
Jim Higgins

I never understood Ford's purchase of Volvo in the first place. Even worse was the purchase of Land Rover. I could almost understand buying Jaguar since it at least had prestige image. But to me Volvo was just another mid-level sedan maker. Sort of the Buick of Europe. Ford would have been much better off spending the money on actually building "new" Fords and Lincolns. I always thought it was weird that Ford sold off it's heavy truck operations and bought Volvo's car operations, while Volvo was buying / expanding heavy truck operations. Seems Volvo knew what it was doing.

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

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What did Volvo ever do to be sold to BMW. We all know what BMW did to MG Rover......they are not around anymore dispite the efforts of Pheonix Venture Holding.

Reply to
vertuas

Why do you consider the purchase of Lnadrover to be strange. Land rover is the only remaining part of the Rover Group. It is the only part of the Rover group that made money for many years. It BMW had not have split the Rover Group up, then maybe it would still be around today.

Landrover has a large UK following, and has a presigious history of its own as does jaguar.

Selling Volvo to BMW is not good for Volvo.

Reply to
vertuas

It was Ford ownership of Volvo that got it all of the cross licensing rights to all of the hybrid technology that is currently licensed to Toyota, among others, as well

mike

Reply to
Mike Hunter

I see your point. There is no way that that the company would have licensed to the technology to anyone else after it licensed it to Ford and Toyota. Companies don't want to make money licensing technology anymore. ;-) Except Nissan is licensing the same technology. Oopsie.

According to this, Ford reached an agreement to license Toyota's hybrid technology in March, 2004:

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If Ford purchased Volvo for their hybrid technology in 1999, and later (2004) had to license the technology from Toyota, they got taken.

Now, Volvo is involved in hybrid technology research and has been for 20 years. However, that is Volvo trucks, which I believe is separate from Volvo cars and has no relationship with Ford.

Thanks for be so clueless, Mike. You make yourself and easy target. Gee, this is fun. ;-)

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff

Better do a bit more research if that is what you believe. Ford is not licensed to Toyota technology any differently than Toyota is licensed to Ford hybrid technology. I will not take the time to enlighten you, do you own research to discover the reason why several companies are cross licensed to the very same technology

Thanks for being so clueless. You make yourself and easy target. ;)

mike

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Reply to
Mike Hunter

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