quote:
I'm breaking Volvo out of the Ford-PAG mix because Ford has just recently announced that they are going to spend a ton of money on Volvo, as much as $5 billion or so dollars, to introduce as many as five new models, increasing their sales by 50%.
I'm only bringing this up because Volvo is at least the tenth car company in the last 12 months to announce that they are going to increase their sales numbers by leaps and bounds because of new and better products, etc. It's not that Volvo doesn't make a good product, because they do.
The real problem is that there are too many manufacturers vying for the same patch of ground in the market. Everyone insists that their near luxury sedan/SUV/crossover vehicle will set "new standards" and redefine the segment. Well guess what? They're not all going to succeed. As a matter of fact, with the sheer number of nameplates crashing into each other at the "magic" $35,000 entry point - many of them will fail.
There will be more and more manufacturers taking a smaller and smaller slice out of the pie, and with the cost restraints every manufacturer is operating under, the kind of breakthrough performance that Volvo is dreaming about is just notgonnahappen.com. That said, Volvo is doing fairly well with what they do. If they don't get too greedy, they should be okay. I give them a "B-."
