Volvo: Back 'on the attack' in US - Automotive News
If Volvo's plan for a $500 million U. S. factory that can build 100,000 vehicles a year sounds ambitious, that is exactly the point. Volvo sold 56,366 vehicles in the United States last year -- just more than half of its proposed new American factory capacity. But Volvo executives say that, five years after being sold to Chinese investors by Ford Motor Co. , Volvo Car Corp. That includes a radical new powertrain and vehicle architecture strategy and the South Carolina plant Volvo announced last week. "We have reinvented ourselves," declares Lex Kerssemakers, CEO of Volvo Cars of North America, "and we believe it now makes sense to go on the attack again in the United States. Both European luxury competitors transformed themselves from low-volume importers to new levels by investing in U. S. manufacturing in the 1990s. Kerssemakers, the former head of product development who was named to North America's top spot in... "I want to get to 100,000 sales as quickly as possible," he said last week from Newport, R. I. , where Volvo executives attended the posh Volvo Ocean Race. "In the past five years, we have invested $11 billion in new products and infrastructure," he said. Source: www.autonews.com
