I hear Haga is a good area to check out. From what I understand, it is an area where locals live (rather than touristy.) Mixed reviews online but I have heard Brain Freeze/Rada Gelato. https://www.goteborg.com/en/places/rada-gelato-2

 

Thank you for your post! Our pickup day is in mid-June, so your experiences and updates are exciting and useful! We are also flying into Stockholm and taking the train to Goth, so would love to hear your experience if that's what you do also!

 

Day 2 learning about Stockholm. A city with very nice greenspace in many locations. Well maintained parks with good landscaping contrast with shops and residences. Sculptures and memorials within the greenspaces and spring colors help make it all prettier. Like if NYC took Central Park, split it into 12 to 15 parts and placed them all over Manhattan. If only ....

The ABBA museum. Well if you saw Mamma Mia on Bway and liked it you will really appreciate the ABBA museum. I wanted my growing kids to see how it was that a Swedish group had such a huge impact on recent historical Western pop culture and I would say objective achieved. I did not realize it was Eurovision 1974 held in the UK that gave ABBA their big break....

Vasa Museum: interesting story about a Swedish king's ambition to display naval prowess in the 1600s and how it failed spectacularly. But great account of the engineering prowess and restorative capabilities in Sweden from the mid 1950s onwards in bringing this ancient sunken battleship half back to life for us to marvel at. Sight to behold for sure. And the museum restaurant is decent too...

Nearby are the Viking Museum and the Museum of Shipwrecks but we had no time. Lunch or fika out by the waterfront here with so many cool cafes looked spectacular but we had no time....

Archipelago boat rides: you'll be spoiled for choice on which of these you pick but it is worth trying to fit in one. Ours was a medium length cruise from the Baltic Sea part of the water front under many bridges and through a lock to the freshwater lake part of the city. City history commentary was useful, seeing so many neighborhoods from the water was also an efficient way to get to know the city and its people. Two takeaways: marinas everywhere help explain the Swedish love of sailing while plentiful nature reserves encourage the Swedish respect for the environment and nature.

Next stop Gothenburg...

 

Day 3

Here’s where the comps to MBZ European Delivery start. Pick up at Landvetter was easy enough. Hoped for an XC90 ride ( vs MB E class in Stuttgart ) but got an 8 passenger Ford transit van instead. Fair on Volvo’s transport company though (PM Logistik) because we were a party of 4 with a fair amount of luggage so an XC90 might have been a squeeze. We were a party of 3 in Germany.

Radisson Blu: very nice 2 br suite, best choice for us given party size. We walked in to the nearby Clarion Post and it was classy but had a darker theme. We’re happy with the Radisson and breakfast thrown in was a plus. The Stuttgart hotel I had with MBZ was of slightly lower standard and we only got 2 nights there on MBZ whereas we have three nights here in the Radisson with Volvo (existing Volvo owner).

One interesting aspect : MBZ offered deeply discounted hotel stays at a number of German and Austrian hotels in areas with good views/attractions like the Black Forest and Telfs Austria ; true top quality at attractive rates. No such thing with Volvo. But MBZ never paid for premium econ air tickets while Volvo gave us two air tickets.

We did dinner on Volvo at Toso. A kind of high end Asian tapas style restaurant, decor thematically like PF Changs but only about 400% more sophisticated. Food was excellent, service was great and judging by the crowd on Sunday night, Gothenburg residents seem to agree. Good thing we got our reservation in early. Seemed like the beautiful people of Gothenburg frequent this restaurant. No dinner on MBZ in Stuttgart in the past.

Volvo is coming out ahead on accommodations, transportation and dinner at this point.

 

If you are looking for things to do in Gothenburg, we loved this one. Here is a link to the crab fishing experience. https://boattrips.se/en/crab-fishing/

Hönö Island is about 35 minutes west of downtown Gothenburg. There is a ferry that runs from the mainland every 10-15 minutes, free of charge. If you decide to do it, I would get out there by mid to late morning because there are limited parking spots. Most spots have an app you must download (posted signs tell you which app) to your phone IOT pay for parking. It is strictly enforced

 

Pick up day and comparisons with MBZ continue.

WOV is really nice and new. While it is a much smaller scale facility than the MB Museum Stuttgart or BMW Welt Muenich, seemed like a lot of thought went into the WOV exhibits and the structure of the building. Volvo clearly has a much smaller budget to build facllities like this vs MBZ/BMW and so while on sheer size, WOV looks small vs the two German museums, it cannot really be faulted for that. Still a very well executed automaker museum/exhibit. Great idea to show the multi million miler P1800 from a US owner/driver no less.

Actual pick up experience and factory tour: have to say the Volvo Torslanda factory experience is well ahead of my MBZ Sindelfingen factory tour. Much more comprehensive, saw many more assembly lines and Volvo was wise to keep us visitors on the little motorized wagon train so people do not stray. Check in lounge and lunch was much better here in Gothenburg vs Stuttgart/Sindelfingen. Delivery and intro to the car was also much better at WOV vs the Sindelfingen delivery hall where about 15-20 MBZ deliveries were going on simultaneously, largely in a semi public hall space. The whole private bay delivery location that WOV executes has a sense of exclusivity that MBZ never gave me. And the car covering Volvo uses to do the unveiling of the car - nothing like that at Sindelfingen. Creature comforts for the buyer on pick up day, Volvo has MBZ beat.

Lastly, we're told that Volvo will help us with WOV to hotel transfer after we return the car and hotel to Landvetter transfer for the flight back. Very nice indeed - I had to deal with all of this largely on my own with MBZ after I dropped the car off for shipment.

At this point it does look like Volvo OSD has a real edge for the buyer over MBZ Euro Delivery, though bear in mind this could still be apples to oranges since my Euro Delivery was 2013 and MBZ is out of the Euro Delivery game for now.

 

Thank you very much for your details of your trip....we have an OSD set up for Sept 4 for our XC90 and we are excited to return to Gothenberg for the experience. We had an OSD in 2008 for a S60 and thoroughly enjoyed it. Looking forward to hearing more about your adventure.

 

I benefited from the views of those who came before me so just trying to pay it back a little bit. Not a lot more to say here - we managed to fit in a few things before heading home. For those who are looking for both hiking and educational type things for kids/young adults in the Gothenburg area, a few nuggets below:

Rugged Scandinavian landscapes and beauty: Saltholmen to the south - just a short 15-20 min drive. Beautiful picturesque town, marinas, rugged landscapes and seascapes. Marstrand to the north - longer drive perhaps 45 mins - chainlink of islands joined by roads but the last stage to get to Marstrand Island itself is a 3 minute ferry ride. Nice hiking and a large old fortress to look at - again, great views of the sea and the settlements right by the sea.

Aeroseum - in between Gothenburg and Marstrand ( sort of ): Depends on what you're expecting - It's not the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly VA by any means. And it definitely needs some sprucing up and perhaps a bigger budget for displays. BUT, if you're an aviation buff and these names mean anything to you - Tunnan, Lansen, Draken, Viggen, Gripen ... could be worth a visit. Swedish aviation technology up close and personal - not even the Smithsonian has all these aircraft in one place and in a tactically relevant underground dispersal/base area. And yes I am an aviation buff and I liked the gate guard which was a Draken.

Gothenburg Stadsmuseum: short walk from the Clarion Post/Radisson Blu area - they're not short on budget here. Pretty good effort to display Gothenburg's history from pre-historical times all the way through to the modern day. Learned that it was not just the Brits and the Dutch that had an East India Company - Sweden had one based out of Gothenburg too. Kind of helps put the Swedish overseas trading culture in perspective. And there is supposed to be a unique type of Gothenburg cultural humor that the city identifies with that we would describe as a mix of sarcasm, wittiness and feistiness.

That's us signing off on the OSD. Learned a lot and we hope it helps Volvo decide to retain OSD one way or another in future and that future participants benefit too.

 

I actually saw a V90 T8 on the street here in Stockholm. Did we ever get that Stateside ? I only remember V90CCs.

We never received V90 PHEVs, in North America; the only PHEV wagon has been the V60 Polestar Engineered.

 

Finally tying a bow on our whole OSD odyssey here with our car finally at home and literally performing day 1 of service to the family. In our garage with her new stablemates. So the timeline was

Gothenburg WOV pick up May 26.
Two short trips in the local area and return to WOV May 27.
Factory refit for some accessories first few days of June.
On the ship around June 11.
Arrived US East Coast Jul 3-6.
Sitting at port clearing customs through July 15
On a truck to the dealer July 16
Our pick up at the dealer Jul 21
Full frontal PPF plus door sills, door handle recesses, gas cap, rear hatch lower ledge loading area Jul 23/24
In our stable and ready for service Jul 25.

Turns out the color of the new XC90 is very close to the color of the little 20 yr old coupe, though we did not plan it that way ...