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In one word; marketing skills. No one actually needs French perfumes. Fancy a rum and cola? - Why bother about coke? This Christmas, I and my brother, a programmer (silly job, good pay), discussed the issue of how to define a 'smart phone'. I'm a simple cook, but my Sony Ericsson Vivaz can do everything his iPhone could do, however, at the end of the row, we both agreed Apple and their products are among the best marketed brands on Earth. IKEA is another example of companies that are more than companies. Everyone has experienced sad misfortunes with IKEA furniture....

Recently, Toyota have been claiming to build the safest cars on Earth. Just like (Chinese owned) Volvo Cars have been doing for decades. I happen to live in Gothenburg, Sweden, home of Volvo. I also happen to admire and respect Japanese culture. But I fail to see how average Toyota cars actually could compete with vehicles like the Volvo V70/XC70/XC60/XC90. The Avensis can, to a certain degree, but is not representative of their product line. Toyota: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk9yGUu6dtA Volvo Cars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtSOYEr-rYQ

Swedish carmaker Volvo wants to let drivers kick back, take their hands off the wheel, and catch up on a little TV while barreling down the motorway, all in the name of improving road safety, The Local's Geoff Mortimore explains. Have you ever thought how nice it would be during those long motorway drives through Sweden if you could take your hands off the wheel, put your feet up, perhaps watch some TV, or surf the web? As it turns out, the day when "driving" without keeping your eyes on the road may be possible sooner than previously thought thanks...

In 1999, Ford paid $6.5 billion for Volvo. Today, Ford sold Volvo to Zhejiang Geely Holding Group for $1.8 billion — a loss of over 72%.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbTEzhaXZ3w

There is a new Government Motors in the world and this one is in Sweden, with Chinese ownership. But when I say Government Motors, it's not what you might think. Let's start at the beginning. Sunday, China's Geely Holding Group signed an agreement to buy Volvo from Ford Motor. Geely will pay Ford $1.78-billion (U.S.) in cash and another $200-million in a note to get full control of Volvo, including its intellectual property. (Note: Ford paid $6.4-billion for Volvo a decade ago.) Now here's the Government Motors piece: As MIT professor Simon Johnson notes on the Huffington Post, investment bank...

<p>Zhejiang Geely Holding Group signed a binding deal yesterday to buy Ford Motor Co.'s Volvo Cars unit for $1.8 billion, representing a coup for the independent Chinese automaker, which is aiming to expand in Europe.</p> <p>The stock-purchase agreement is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to be completed in the third quarter, reps of the two automakers said as they presented the deal at a news conference at Volvo Cars headquarters in Goteborg, Sweden.</p>

Chinese car maker Zhejiang Geely Holding has signed a deal to buy Sweden's Volvo Cars from US auto maker Ford. "I can confirm that a final agreement on the sale of Volvo to Geely was signed at 2:40 pm," Volvo Cars spokesman Per-Åke Fröberg told AFP ahead of a news conference due around 3.30pm. The deal was signed at Volvo headquarters in Gothenburg by Ford's financial director Lewis Booth and Geely's president Li Shufu, Froeberg said.

Sweden's Market Court (Marknadsdomstolen) has ruled that Volvo Car's marketing of its XC60 vehicle as the "safest in the world" is misleading and lacks supporting evidence. "Volvo has not presented any proof at all which verifies or even indicates that the XC60 is the safest in the world. Volvo's claim is a general one and clearly lacks substantiation," the court said in its ruling on a case brought by Japanese firm Toyota. Volvo has been warned that it will incur a fine of one million kronor ($140,000) if it does not desist from making the claims. The court based its...

After meeting all of Ford’s sale terms, it looks like Chinese car company Geely will be purchasing Volvo from the Blue Oval next year. While some work still remains to be completed before signing – including final documentation, financing and government approvals

Ford's finalized sales terms of Volvo, the U.S. automaker's Swedish brand, to Chinese car conglomerate Geely. As one meatball falls on the floor, another is picked up... then sold to the Chinese restaurant down the block. And these are seriously meatball-like prices. Ford bought Volvo for $6 billion in 1999 and reports indicate they'll be selling the brand for just $2 billion. Well, at least it's, you know, not a total loss.

With today's news of Saab's death and Volvo's impending sale to China, what brand is left to fill "English Dept. Faculty Only" parking spaces at liberal institutions of higher ed? More bluntly, what will latté-swilling liberal Northeasterners drive now?

Disabling the engine on cash for clunkers. Volvo is super tough!

ARLINGTON, VA — Crash tests demonstrate that occupant protection in all kinds of vehicles is improving. However, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety doesn't routinely test vehicles in every size/type category. Emphasizing vehicles for family use, the Institute usually crash tests 4-door models. To evaluate the extent to which automakers are extending crashworthiness improvements to 2-door cars, the Institute recently conducted front, side, and rear tests of 2009 coupes including the Chevrolet Cobalt, Ford Focus, Honda Civic, and Scion tC, all small models, plus the midsize Volvo C30. "We're often asked about the crash test performance of 2-door cars," says...

The winners: Supermini Fiat 500 Start&Stop £9,700, 113g/km, 58.9mpg Small family car Volvo S40 1.6D DRIVe S £17,495, 104g/km, 72.4mpg Family car Toyota Avensis 2.0 D-4D T2 £17,545, 135g/km, 55.4mpg Executive car BMW 318d ES £24,235, 123g/km, 60.1mpg MPV Citroën Grand C4 Picasso 1.6 HDi £19,095, 140g/km, 53.3mpg 4X4 Lexus RX450h SE-L £50,460, 148g/km, 44.8mpg Sports car Mini Cooper S £16,575, 149g/km, 45.6 mpg Luxury car Audi A8 2.8 V6 FSI SE £49,970, 199g/km, 34.0mpg Technology Vauxhall Ampera Editor's award Tesla

Do we take more risks when we feel safe? Fifty years after we began using the three-point seatbelt, there's a new answer ___ In the middle of the last century, Volvo began seeking improvements to seat belts to protect drivers and passengers in its vehicles. When the Swedish automaker tried a single strap over the belly, the result was abdominal injuries in high-speed crashes. The engineers also experimented with a diagonal chest restraint. It decapitated crash-test dummies. Volvo then turned to a 38-year-old mechanical engineer named Nils Bohlin, who had developed pilot ejector seats for the Saab aircraft company. After...

Background: Volvo Cars (owned by Ford Motor Company) claims their all new Volvo XC 60 to be the world's safest car. The consequence: The Toyota people have worked themselves into a rage and now take legal actions. (The following is a translation of a Swedish article. My English isn't perfect, but I hope what follows at least is comprehensible:) "Toyota disapproves of Volvo's claims of the new XC60 to be the world's safest car. Toyota now sues Volvo in the Swedish Market Court (Marknadsdomstolen). In their application to the court, Toyota argues that there indeed are cars around the Globe...

Volvo had the unenviable time slot of the last press conference of the day, but the world premiere of the Volvo S60 concept should have drawn more than a gaggle of photographers elbowing for room at the rope line. What was shown was more than just the future of Volvo’s mainline sedan but of Volvo design in general. The deep shouldered look—at least to the extent it has been—and the “chair-shaped” taillights are out. The new look for Volvo is the double wave. Forget the Orrefors crystal center-stack/console. It’s concept car fluff and though some soft of legerdemain creating another...

Volvo Cars is introducing an entirely new 2.4-liter 5-cylinder diesel engine in the Volvo S80. Sharing only the D5 badge and the 5-cylinder configuration with the previous generation, the new D5 is Euro-5 compliant and is more efficient than its predecessor. Featuring sequential twin turbochargers, ceramic glow-plugs and piezoelectric fuel injectors, the new engine applied in the S80 delivers 205 hp (153 kW) of power and 420 Nm (310 lb-ft) of torque, with fuel consumption of 6.2 liters/100 km (38 mpg US) and CO2 emissions of 164 g/km. The previous engine generation has undergone constant development in a series of...

Sweden's troubled carmakers, Volvo and Saab, have been given a 28bn kronor (£2.3bn, $3.5bn) government bail-out to help them cope with falling demand. This comes after the US House of Representatives approved a $14bn (£9.4bn) rescue for US car firms. Volvo and Saab had been asking for Swedish state support because of the financial woes of their US owners. The plan consists of a maximum of 20bn kronor in credit guarantees, and up to 5bn kronor in rescue loans. As well as the credit guarantees and rescue loans, the government said it would also earmark 3bn kronor in research and...

The Swedish government will offer automotive companies Skr25bn ($3.1bn, €2.4bn, £2.1bn) in loans and loan guarantees to ensure the future of domestic car manufacturing. The move follows the announcement of thousands of redundancies in the Swedish automotive sector and reflects the continuing uncertainty over the future of Saab and Volvo. Both marques are loss-making and their US parents, GM and Ford, are seeking $14bn in emergency aid from the US government. Volvo, which was sold to Ford in 1999, announced this week that it had finalised 2,700 redundancies in Sweden out of a global cost-cutting programme of 4,600, about one-fifth...

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Ford Motor is in talks to sell its Volvo car business to its China partner Changan Automobile Group, the National Business Daily reported on Tuesday, citing an unnamed source at the Chinese company.

A conservative media watchdog says it's outrageous that Barack Obama is blaming a major cable news service for costing him two to three points in the polls. In a recently published interview for the New York Times Magazine, the Democratic presidential candidate said: "I'm convinced that if there were no FOX News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls. If I were watching FOX News, I wouldn't vote for me, right? Because the way I'm portrayed 24/7 is as a freak!" The Illinois senator continued, explaining that he is being typecast as "the latte-sipping, New York...

The building of true civilization has always been exposed to various difficulties. But in the end, periods of unemployment, war and political turboil is nothing but small potatoes. Personally speaking, I'll turn 39 years old soon and one of the things that make me get out of bed and drive off to work each morning - a part from the luxury of driving a wonderful Volvo V70 to the place - is the magnificence of toiling in the company of certain younger Swedish work mates who I daily encounter there; people in their 20s who believe in hard work and...

As the British lads would phrase it: 'those Chinese wankers!' Beijing refused to admit a colonnade of around 80 beautifully restored Dutch classic Volvo cars that partook in a well-led rallye. They simply sent those guys to the nearest port to ship them back to Holland. Why? Because of a fear of spies? Political upheaval? No. Officials said: 'those cars are just polluters. And our air already is quite polluted. So we won't allow it to be even more polluted by those eighty cars'. Nice people, those Chinese. So environmentalistic. So human. So Greenpeace. So alert. And so friendly. So...

TALLAHASSEE (Bay News 9) -- Desperate for votes and armed with new technologies, political parties are changing the way they find their voters. They're tracking everything from the food people eat to the car they drive. The sophisticated strategy is called microtargeting. Republicans pioneered microtargeting four years ago. They say it contributed to George W. Bush being re-elected. Katie Gordon with the state GOP says people who own guns are their top microtargets. "What we do is contact people and ask them, and maybe people who have not supported a Republican in the past or who have not indicated that...

Every nation could be described as a manifestation of a unique trait of character and most countries furthermore nurture, give emphasize to and celebrate this national identity of theirs. Some examples of such key national characters (please DO comment if you feel inclined to); USA: Liberty Italy: Creativity France: Refinement India: Spirituality Germany: Self-discipline Finland: "Sisu" (a Finnish term meaning "To have guts") Britain: Elevatedness Denmark: "Hygge" (a Danish word meaning "Good-naturedness", of mind as well as of deed) Spain: Passion China: Cultivation Russia: Chaos - just joking, I would actually say "Heart" (in the sense of having a big...

" I was raised by small town folks from Kansas. With Midwestern values. Honesty and hard work and responsibility. And so this notion, somehow, that I'm some sprout-eating, Volvo driving person, when you know, of all the candidates remaining in this race - I probably-- came from-- the toughest circumstances,'' he said. "Not overly tough, I don't want to overstate. But some tough circumstances-- without a father in the house. And you know, raised by people who, you know, come straight out of Central Casting of small Midwestern towns. I think it just doesn't match up with who I...

An explosion has been reported in central Stockholm. Police confirmed on Sunday morning that a bomb squad was at the scene and that no casualties had been reported. Neighbours reported to police early on Sunday morning that a large explosion had rocked the area around Surbrunnsgatan 4 in central Stockholm. Twenty windows were blown out as result of the blast. According to Eva Nilsson at Stockholm police something exploded under a parked car. "To the naked eye the car is in principle intact." A large area was cordoned off by police after the explosion, and Surbrunnsgatan was closed off between...

President Bush toured a display of Volvo renew- able- energy vehicles March 5 at the AB Volvo Group booth at the International Renewable Energy Conference in Washington. The trucks are designed to run on a variety of renewable fuels, ranging from natural and synthetic biodiesel that can run in today’s engines to more exotic liquid and gas fuels that would require vehicle modifications to make them practical, clean and efficient. Refinery and distribution networks also would have to be built. Mack, a Volvo brand, showed off a heavy-duty electric hybrid dump truck designed to recover energy from the brakes and...

FORD is preparing to sell Volvo, the Swedish car group it bought eight years ago, in a move that could raise $8 billion (£3.9 billion) for the struggling Detroit giant. City sources say that a decision in principle to sell Volvo was taken a fortnight ago, but that the timing of the sale had yet to be decided. No bank had been appointed to handle the transaction. Volvo is the flagship of Ford’s Premier Automotive Group (PAG), a stable of luxury European marques it built up during an expansionist phase in the 1980s and 1990s. It began dismantling the group...

Stockholm - Employees of heavy-vehicle maker Volvo have been confronted with a startling element of globalisation at their Swedish assembly plant - big hairy spiders from Brazil. The spiders have been discovered at the northern plant in Umea, 640 kilometres north of Stockholm - apparenlty arriving with shipments of truck cabins made in Brazil, reports said Tuesday. The biggest spider found so far was eight centimetres across, an employee a told Vasterbottens-Kuriren nesspaper, adding: 'It was not a Swedish spider.' Some of the creatures moved 'incredibly fast'. No one has been bitten, the reports said - but management has...

Volvo’s treasure hunt finds real-life pirate treasure worth $500 million Posted on: June 22nd, 2007 Filed under: Industry News, Volvo Remember Volvo’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End treasure hunt? The Volvo treasure chest is filled with $50,000 in gold and a key to a new Volvo from the sea floor. Well the retrival of that chest will hang in the balance until controversy dies down over the discovery of real life treasure by Volvo’s Hunt partner, Odyssey Marine Exploration. Earlier this year, Volvo selected Odyssey to sink a treasure chest in the Western Mediterranean. They had planned to...

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Loss-making Ford Motor Co. is planning to sell Swedish car maker Volvo and German carmaker BMW could be a possible buyer, a Swedish newspaper said on Monday. The Goteborgs Posten daily reported on its website that a source within Ford said BMW has been studying a possible purchase of Volvo. The Financial Times also reported last Friday BMW was in informal talks to buy Volvo. "We cannot comment on speculation, this is a question for our owner," said a spokeswoman for Volvo cars. Ford bought Volvo in 1999 and it is now part of the U.S. company's...

German carmaker BMW wants to buy Gothenburg-based Volvo Cars from Ford, it has been reported. British car magazine Autocar, quoting sources in the car industry, wrote that BMW had hired a European investment bank to analyse Volvo. The magazine added that BMW had also looked at Italian company Alfa Romeo, currently owned by Fiat. Car industry analysts told Autocar that BMW wants to broaden its brand portfolio to strengthen future growth. It was also suggested that Volvo would improve BMW's environmental and safety profiles. But car industry analysts who spoke to Swedish news agency TT dismissed the idea of Volvo...

NEWS OUT OF CANADA Manitoba Herald, Canada The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The actions of President Bush are prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray, and agree with Bill O'Reilly. Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night. "I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in...

Pope Benedict XVI Receives Custom Volvo XC90No German car for Pope Benedict XVI as the Catholic church leader received a new Volvo XC90 that has been custom tailored for his personal use. During a June 28 ceremony at the Vatican, the Pope was presented with the keys to the SUV. The V8 version vehicle is dark blue with a light interior and Volvo officials say the car, like every Volvo XC90, is designed for safety with features like ROPS (rollover protection system). Press Release Volvo Cars presented His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, with one of its Sport Utility Vehicles. The...

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...

The Corporate Curtain 1/20/2006 By Robert H. Knight How companies are using views on homosexuality to punish their Christian employees. America's corporations are under increasing pressure not only to accommodate homosexuality but to celebrate it and to punish employees who object. Over the past two decades, hundreds of companies have adopted varying degrees of homosexual activism in their official policies. As a result, a growing number of Christians have been disciplined or fired for resisting the trend. Elizabeth Birch, former president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest homosexual pressure group, said in 2004 that she was happily surprised...

DETROIT -- For the first time in nine years, all of the top picks in Consumer Reports' annual vehicle guide are made by Japanese automakers. The Honda Civic is the magazine's top small sedan, while the Toyota Highlander Hybrid is the top mid-sized sport utility vehicle, according to results released Wednesday. Vehicles from Nissan Motor Co. and Subaru, a division of Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., round out the top picks in 10 categories. Asian brands also fared best in the magazine's survey of vehicle reliability. Toyota Motor Corp.'s Lexus brand was first, while Honda was second and the Toyota brand...

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 16:48:00 UTC As the clock ticks down, the boats get closer and closer to Cape Town – just 365 miles for the leader - and nerves start jangling. To lose a place now; worse, to lose a rig or even a sail, could ruin your whole day...

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - A Swedish court on Wednesday convicted Volvo Cars of gender discrimination for denying a woman a job at its manufacturing plant because she was too short to work at the conveyor belt. ADVERTISEMENT Sweden's Labor Court ordered Volvo to pay 40,000 kronor ($5,200) to the woman, who was not identified, saying the hiring policy constituted "indirect gender discrimination." Volvo's hiring policy stated that for safety reasons, employees must be between 5 feet 4 inches and 6 feet 5 inches to work at the conveyor belt at its car manufacturing plant outside Goteborg. The woman only measured 5...

Well, the GOP has stabbed us in the back again. Joe Farah was right. Roberts was driving a Volvo out of his driveway. That's all we need to know that he is the next Souter. That's it. We need to start a new party and draft Buchanan.

The Swedish unit of U.S. carmaker Ford Motor Co. is experimenting with a built-in breathalyzer and speed governor to reduce road accidents. The breathalyzer is part of the seat belt mechanism, and before the car will start, the driver must blow below .08 percent or less with the belt buckled. The test vehicle also is equipped with a special set of ignition keys that can be programmed to limit the car to preset speeds, which would enable parents to have control over inexperienced teenagers.

Volvo asks Swedish government for permission to allow test drivers to booze up STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - Car maker Volvo has asked the Swedish government to waive the country's strict drunk driving laws to allow its test drivers to booze on the job, news reports said Wednesday. The safety-conscious automaker wants to test a new technology that is designed to make the car take control of steering when a driver's reaction time is slowed down because of intoxication or fatigue. If the request is granted, it would be the first time the government makes an exception to Sweden's drunk driving...

/begin my translationN. Korea: No.1 Debtor Country to Sweden Chang Yong-hoonYonhap News, Seoul -- N. Korea's debt to Sweden amounts to 2.167 billion Krona (USD: 295 million dollars), making it the top debtor nation to Sweden.On June 11th, KOTRA(note: a trade promotion outfit of S. Korean government) quoted the report of Swedish Credit Guarantee Agency, named 'Foreign Debt Situations,' N. Korean debts are due to their importing of  passenger cars from Volvo and construction & mining equipment from Atlas Copco in 1970's.N. Korea ordered 600 Volvo passenger cars in 1973 and imported them the next year. At one time, N. Korea was the largest...

If one looks for the company which has done the most to affirm and promote the homosexual lifestyle, he would be hard-pressed to find a company which has done more than Ford Motor Company. While this is hardly known to the general population, it is well known by numerous homosexual organizations. In fact, the Human Rights Campaign (a national homosexual organization whose goal is homosexual marriage) gave Ford a 100% corporate rating. Ford makes not only Ford, but also Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Volvo, Jaguar, and Land Rover. From redefining family to include homosexual marriage, to giving hundreds of thousands of...

Our correspondent ignored the hype to test the Volvo from the all-woman design team THE new YCC car from Volvo is the first to be designed entirely by, and for, women, but at first glance they needn’t have bothered. It looks like they got the fat bloke propping up the bar to think of every sexist joke about female drivers, and build it into a vehicle. Women, you know, can’t park, so this car has an autopark function, that lets you know you whether you can fit the space, then steers the car into it. We all know that traffic...

A major automaker is partnering with a homosexual activist group by developing a special marketing campaign geared towards homosexuals. Ford Motor Company's Jaguar North America and Land Rover North America announced Tuesday their expanded national sponsorship of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). The automakers will launch ads this month featuring a special "give-back" purchase offer benefiting the group, as part of a marketing and advertising campaign designed to reach "gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) consumers." "At Jaguar we understand the importance of creating strong partnerships with community organizations that impact our customers' lives," said George Ayres,...

Fortune 500 Companies See Money in Gay Families Wednesday, May 26, 2004 By Catherine Donaldson-Evans NEW YORK — Now that gay marriage has taken center stage as a hot-button issue and has been legalized in Massachusetts, Fortune 500 companies are eyeing its business potential — and seeing dollar signs. Recognizing same-sex couples and families as an emerging market, large corporations have begun targeting the demographic in their ads. Companies including International Business Machines (IBM), Volvo and JP Morgan (JPM) have featured gay couples or parents, mostly in print or online ads. And Subaru has been marketing to the gay population...