Volvo News: Volvo's CEO Says No To A Flagship

[William Maley]

By William Maley

Staff Writer - CheersandGears.com

April 24, 2013

Since Volvo was bought by Chinese automaker Geely back in 2010, talk emerged that Volvo was considering a flagship. This would be further fueled by comments from Geely Chairman Li Shufu who said Volvo should compete directly with BMW, Mercedes and Audi; and the introduction of two concept vehicles, the Concept Universe and Concept You. Volvo's CEO at the time, Stefan Jacoby said a luxury sedan doesn't fit the image of the brand. Jacoby's sucessor agrees.

"We don't have any ambitions to go into a segment where we would compete with vehicles that have V-8 or V-12 engines. We don't believe it would fit our brand image," said Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson.

Samuelsson's current focus is to get the replacements for the XC90 and S80, both to be underpinned by Volvo’s new scalable platform architecture (SPA) out on the market.

Source: Automotive News Europe (Subscription Required)

William Maley is a staff writer for Cheers & Gears. He can be reached at [email protected] or you can follow him on twitter at @realmudmonster.

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[G. David Felt]

This makes perfect sense as Volvo tends to compete more with Buick, Lexus, Infiniti, Acura and such than MB and BMW. I do not see Volvo as a high end luxury car builder. Clearly not in line with their DNA.