Posted on 03/23/2006 9:49:26 AM PST by Paul Ross
One more upscale automaker is jumping into the Chinese auto market as Volvo Car Corp. will begin making cars in China this year.
Volvo will build its S40 sedan at a plant owned by Changan Ford, a Ford joint venture in the southwestern city of Chongqing, officials said.
Late to the Chinese party, Volvo said it was confident Chinese manufacturing operations would be profitable as early as next year.
Volvo said it could reach its Chinese manufacturing target of 10,000 cars a year in 2007, and it was working with a number of Changan Ford’s local suppliers to meet the government’s local content requirements and the company’s quality standards.
“We are, after working with (Changan Ford) on this project for over a year, convinced that their factory, working together with our own experts, can produce the quality Volvo requires,” said Volvo Chief Executive Fredrik Arp.
“At 10,000 units, we will be making money,” said Alexander Klose, Volvo’s head of Asia Pacific.
Volvo will now go up against Audi, which has been making expensive cars for years for the Chinese middle class.
Volvo’s unit sales in China almost doubled in 2005, to over 4,800 units, and could more than double this year to 10,000.
BMW set up its China factory in 2003, and DaimlerChrysler is building a plant in Beijing that will be able to build 25,000 Mercedes-Benz cars annually.
Slippery slope handing the Chi-Comms technology.
That is, if they don't send those inventions over here as Chinese tanks and humvees to obliterate us.
I;ve owned a Volvo 850 and there's really no IP of significance. Poor electronic systems, brake maintainence and oil pump problems. Turbos? The double-turbo on the S80s are particularly maintainence heavy. Tough on tires too.
"Slippery slope handing the Chi-Comms technology."
It started in the late 1970s. Businesses gave up vision for what the quarterly statement read. What makes money this quarter, so I can get my bonus. That throttled R&D. This is the logical conclusion. No consideration is given to anything other than what the bottomline will be this, and possibly next quarter. The fact that China is communist, and nationalization of assets is possible is immaterial. The fact that countrymen are being idled in favor of employing near slave labor in China is immaterial. The fact that the Chinese have no problem with outright theft of intellectual property is immaterial.
The only thing that matters is how quickly a profit can be turned. A very sad and dangerous situation.
Ford's just continuing their long standing business practices. Remember, they built a large percentage of military trucks used by Germany in World War II, at a new factory built in the 1930s. (One reason the percentage was so high is that the USAAF targeted the German owned truck factories, but not the American owned one.) http://www.anesi.com/ussbs02.htm (scroll down to about page 12 of the report)
What's to keep the Chinese from buying a S40 off a lot in Chicago and doing the same thing?
Why do that hard work of reverse engineering or copying when all the production is handed to you, if the West will jump through hoops...spending their own money... to set you up in business against them? Where every production decison is immediately relayed to the 'clone' entity?
This is what happened to GM.
Yeah, they might have to pay MBA tuition at the University of Michigan.
Ford at Cologne, the third large producer, was not attacked but records show that production was sharply curtailed during the same period by destruction of component suppliers and the bombing of its power supply. By December of 1944, production of trucks was only about 35 percent of the average for the first half of 1944.
He's also ignoring the fact that Opel's factories were destroyed, and Opel was 100% owned by GM by 1931 (80% in 1929).....
Volvo S40 production in China should not be surprising, as the S40 runs on the C1 platform which also serves as the basis for the Mazda 3 and Ford Focus (European version), which are already in production in China.
Bump! Thanks for the info!
It does tend to take all the wind out of his sails, doesn't it?
He's also ignoring the fact that Opel's factories were destroyed, and Opel was 100% owned by GM by 1931
We aren't talking about the 1930s, we are talking about the 1940s, so the observation is irrelevant. The Nazis seized the Adam Opel operations in 1940, and the plants were under Nazi ownership when they were bombed. (Yes, before the US was in the war).
The Ford operations, on the other hand, were never seized. Ford managed to set up an 'independent' managing director to control Ford Germany through the war. (There is some evidence that at least some communications were laundered through Switzerland). So Ford did manage to retain ownership of the factory during the period of Allied bombing, and the managing director provided an accounting after the war.
GM didn't cease production in Japan until 1941.
You're welcome, however, I think you fail to win this argument.
NAZI seizure did not divest General Motors of its continuing claim to interest. Soooo, U.S. bombing of Opel, did in effect, bomb to smithereens GM's investment.
And note...after the war...who wound up with Opel?
GM resumed management control of Adam Opel AG on November 1, 1948.
This is some of the remains of what they received: 
The same with GM. They realized the loss when AOAG was nationalized in 1940. That they got the remains of the company back some 8 years later was their good fortune and the luck of geography.
But it doesn't change the fact that the plant was not under GM ownership when it was bombed. Ford, on the other hand, remained under company ownership, if not direct control, and was not bombed.
Those are facts, and not subject to debate. The why can be debated. I say that there was cause and effect; you can say that it was a mere coincidence that a major producer of military equipment never made it on to the 8th Air Force's target list.
By the way, this isn't the first time the issue has hit FR. Here's a link to a story from 2001:
Ford Denies Nazi-Era Profit Claims
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/585261/posts
"Unlike other U.S.-owned properties in Nazi Germany, the Ford-Werke plant was never formally confiscated by the German government, and Rintamaki acknowledged that Ford held a controlling stake in it throughout the war."
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