Volvo design and headlight wipers

“Interview with Volvo's design boss Peter Horbury

Volvo’s new design boss is also its old design boss.

By Andrew English 9:45AM GMT 29 Oct 2009

Briton Peter Horbury was Volvo’s design director in the Nineties before it was purchased by Ford and staff were moved all around the world.

Horbury ended up as design director of Ford in America, pulling together the disparate brands and designs under the blue oval into a coherent whole. So what persuaded him to take his old job back?

“I didn’t really think about it,” he said. “If I had, I might have said 'No'.”

Horbury is referring to the fact that the ‘For Sale' signs have been up around loss-making Volvo for nine months, with several buyers rumoured to be interested in the 82-year-old car maker with its impeccable reputation for safety and the environment first.

“It’s certainly an adventure,” he said, “like one of those mystery tours my grandmother used to make. In the end you’ve got to trust that the brand is too important to allow someone to damage it.””

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China's Geely now owns Swedish carmaker Volvo

 

 

By Joe Mcdonald, AP Business Writer

BEIJING — Geely Holding Group completed its acquisition of Ford Motor Co.'s Volvo unit Monday in a $1.5 billion deal that gives the small but ambitious Chinese automaker a global brand and huge management challenges.

The legendary Swedish automaker is China's biggest foreign auto acquisition and an unusually large deal for a private Chinese company.

Industry analysts say 13-year-old Geely, barely known abroad, will face a struggle in integrating the two corporate cultures and turning around Volvo Cars, a perennial money-loser in a country with strong labor unions.

Geely agreed in March to buy Volvo from Ford (F), which sold its European brands to raise cash and focus on its core Ford and Lincoln units. Geely said it paid $1.3 billion in cash plus a $200 million note — less than the $1.8 billion price announced in March due to changes in pension obligations and working capital.”