Report: Ford, Geely talks over Volvo stumbling

sell its Volvo unit to China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Company Limited, a new report out of Sweden suggests that the talks are not going smoothly. The positive signs given earlier have been exaggerated," Joran Hagglund, state secretary at Sweden's ministry for enterprise, [...]

Honestly I'd rather they shut down entirely than get sold to China.

and then where would we get new Volvos?

They wouldn't really be Volvos anymore IMO. Nothing Volvo has made since about 1995 has interested me, and I never buy new cars anyway. As long as I can keep my 240 going I'll be fine.

So if we don't buy new cars, why are we concerned about the fate of their manufacturers?

We may want to buy a car in 5 years time???

GI7B

Simple: I want to be able to buy spares in 2, 3, 5 years time. I also like to upgrade/update every few years.

In 2-4 years time I'll be looking to upgrade, I kind of have my eye on the 2010 diesel XC70. But if, at that point, the spare parts will be made from Chinese potmetal and break-after-3-weeks plastics, well, I dunno. I truly love driving the marque, but I won't make a fool of myself.

No, not overstating the case. To wit: we bought a China made Bosch washing machine (unbeknownst to us, ordered from the catalogue in the shop, we thought we were buying German) and the plastic started to break up within a fortnight, not just ours but also a friend's who bought the same model). One notes that Bosch no longer sells washing machines made in China in this country at least.

I'd be prepared to buy a new car, but the depreciation of new Volvos is just too high, at least here in NZ: you're losing 50% in the first 2 years. That's a lot of money. I can't quite afford to chuck 50 grand out of the window. The 6-year old hasn't lost a cent in value over the last year.

-P.

All cars start out new at some point. I'll let some other sucker pay the depreciation, but realistically I'll have to buy a newer car at some point, it's only a matter of time before somebody hits mine or critical parts start to get too hard to find.

It's also just sad to see a unique company I've been loyal to become just another brand name. The same thing happened to Saab, they built a fantastic and very unique product up until the early 90s at which point GM trashed them and recently left for dead. There is so much of that these days, just look at all the famous 70s hi-fi names that are now simply brands slapped on cheap Chinese junk. It used to be a brand meant something, you could buy brand X and know what you were getting, these days brands are nothing but marketing, hollow names slapped onto products produced by the lowest bidder. You might buy one today that is excellent, then buy another next month of the same brand and model only to find it falls apart. I know that China is capable of building good stuff, but the quality control and consistency are terrible. There are so many products that are just utter garbage that flat out don't live up to claims and you can rarely tell until you've bought it.

The V40 has just enough of a hint of the P1800ES about it (but not as much as the 480ES had) to make me look at it. Just look.

I've had my '98 UK V40 2.0i for just coming up four years and must admit I am beginning to like it ...