Last week we received news that Volvo had shed off 2,000 employees in a global directive of $700Million cut on spending.
Currently Volvo employs 25,000 employees worldwide and makes around 450,000 cars annually.
Volvo used to be part of the PAG, Premier Auto Group that had seen Ford's better days. Back when Ford's F-150 was doing so well, where in fact throughout 23 years of American history, the F-150 had stayed firmly on the very top of sales charts, in fact there was a year where Ford is able to sell 1 F-150 every 30 seconds.
After acquiring Aston Martin, Land Rover, Jaguar, Volvo; Ford created the PAG and in fact had done rather well, with Aston Martin reaching sales increase of almost ten folds, Land Rover doing exceptionally well, Volvo thou had stagnant sales but product direction, portfolio had been stronger than ever. Jaguar upon launching the XK and XF had seen tremendous increase and should be returning to profit this year itself.
Ford UK is doing a rather good job, producing popular cars such as the Focus, Mondeo, S-Max that racks up sales charts and dominate their segments, not only because they're cheap, but reliable, wonderful handling and even the highly critical Jeremy Clarkson had always gave most Ford UK's cars a thumbs up.
Down South, Ford Australia (I'm not going to go into each country, but mind you Ford had three seperate entities, US, UK and AUS), Ford's doing very well and stayed healthy.
Now what's the problem? Why is Ford selling off all they had? Well the true laggard that drags back Ford and creates losses of tens of billions every year is in fact Ford USA itself.
We at Wheels Weekly seriously thinks that Ford should sell off Ford USA itself.
Back to the story, we've had sources reporting that thou Ford continued denying they're selling Volvo (Premier Auto Group had only 1 brand left anyway) they've met Renault, the group that had a controlling stake in Nissan about possible sales of Volvo. But was called off for not being able to reach an agreeable selling price.
Well we believed that Volvo's strong portfolio in sedans, large sedans and large SUVs would be well suited to Renaults portfolio consisting mainly of hatchbacks and MPVs, and with Nissan's foray of Infiniti RWD sedans and their engineering prowess would have a platform to ride on the luxury line up of Volvo to have true RWD luxury driver's cars.
However the problem is, Renault and Nissan hadn't been stable recently, with sales increasing a year, dropping the other, profiting one year, close to the reds the other, we're wondering bagging up another manufacturer would be any good for these two.
