Volvo XC90 Cross Shop

No, to be fair, bimmers and mercs from the 80s/90s/early 2000s were GREAT cars (V12 S-class aside lol). My first car in HS was an old handed down manual E30 coupe my dad had bought new back in the day. Thing was a TANK. 25 years daily driven year round in MA, snow and all, 350K+ miles, with little more than routine maintenance/consumables. Sold it as a running car.

Dad also had a manual E34 that wasn’t all that well maintained…..went only 20 years and 250K miles before the block cracked and ended its life. Still drove it to the dealer to trade it in lol.

Those days for both bimmer and merc are long gone. Not knocking anyone who is into them but modern ones are shitboxes compared to their ancestors. But the disposable luxury leasemobile model makes corporate more $ than the overbuilt, reliable, yet amazing driving German machine that will last decades.

 

We live in a world where everything is multi-national. The amount of Chinese content in everything you buy is way more than you'd like. In many cases, it doesn't get reported because you get Chinese components that are assembled somewhere else into a part, and thus it's not a Chinese part per se.

But let's zoom out.

The Volvo I had was designed and Sweden and built in Sweden. The one before that was during Ford's ownership of the brand, but again designed in Sweden and built in Sweden.

Was Volvo an American brand previously?

What about Mercedes Benz? Their largest shareholder is Chinese. Are they a Chinese brand? 21% of their shares are owned by Asian institutional/strategic shareholders. 20.5% of them are held in the US. Only 7.62% of them are held by German institutional investors.

Really, if Volvo isn't Swedish, then Mercedes isn't German.

Now, if you want to get into "Well, they import some cars that are made in China", then we need to talk about the South African BMWs you can buy, the Chinese Buicks, the Brazilian VWs, etc.

And the Volvos they make in the USA.

 

And before that, when I bought a Volvo, was I buying an American car?

After all. It was owned by Ford.

It's funny - you don't see people droning on about Minis, Bentleys and Rolls Royces being German. You don't see people complaining about Land Rovers being Indian.

And Jeeps. Those are Italian. Right?

You completely and conveniently ignored the fact that Mercedes Benz, a fine German company, has more Chinese ownership than actual German ownership.

In a world of publicly traded companies, where capital is free to move about, ownership is a strange barometer to use.

Are these companies American:

- Burger King
- Holiday Inn
- 7-11
- Milwaukee (the tool company)
- Greyhound
- Budweiser
- GE (appliances)
- Popeyes


All of them are owned by foreign companies.

Does that actually matter? In a world where you're going to the store and buying tons of Chinese-made goods that were imported by "American" companies, how is it less American (or Swedish, German, or whatever) to have foreign ownership?

Ownership is a meaningless measure. It ranks behind where something is assembled. In the modern age, where the intellectual property is being generated, the engineering and management talent, and the primary audience in mind when it comes to design...these are far more important when it comes to describing what nationality a company is.

Not who happened to buy up the most shares.

 

Haven't they given full control to volvo, however, for designing and manufacturing the vehicle?

 

Volvo trucks is a totally separate company at this point, sharing only a name. There are a few companies around like this.

 

IKEA is now Dutch.

 

Saab Aerospace is worth consideration.

 

A lot of companies have re-domesticated there. Ferrari’s largest shareholder, Exor (the Agnelli family) is based there.


As is Stellantis.

That’s right - the Dutch basically are ground zero for everything European.

 

Yup. Either’s either that or they just want to have some fun after the shareholders’ meeting.

 

Why not the upcoming Lexus GX550?

 

Whatever happened to their cars? One of my professors had one which was super old. He liked it a lot and said he’ll never get rid of it. 9000 turbo or something? Quirky car.

 

25 years ago I had a Saab 9000 turbo. That thing was crazy fun to drive. Expensive to fix though...

 

I was talking about saab.

 

was it due to bad product or some other reasons?

 

Ah yes, but without GM, the world would have never known the Saab Trailblazer Aero.

 

That's the time period where GM and Ford were hell bent on destroying all the cool European brands. It think one of the only long-term European companies to be owned by a big American Brand was Opel. It was owned by General Motors from 1929 until 2017 and GM pretty much left it alone.

 

Unfortunately, GM happened to Saab.

 

The new GX550 does look pretty sharp from what I have seen in pics/youtube/etc.
However, people will be lined up by the masses to pay whatever the Lexus dealers want. I am not going to go through that.
Call me strange, however, I like the Toyota name/marque a bit better than Lexus.

 

Agreed. either its the "lux" name or what I don't know, I'd much rather buy a toyota product. Ultimately its not much different, so I find it strange as well.