Volvo S90 Production on a train to Europe
Production of the Volvo S90 has been moved to China, and the first cars are starting to arrive in Europe on the new China-Europe railway link.
But the plans didn’t stop there, with Volvo admitting it wasn’t just the S90 which was shifting production to China, but that the new 60 Series of cars – the recently revealed XC60 and the yet to arrive S60 and V60 – would also be built in China.
That plan means, for now at least, some 60 and 90 Series cars still being built in Europe, but with the new XC40 (and other new 40 Series cars) also being built in China – alongside the new Lynk & Co cars – European production by Volvo looks like it’s in terminal decline.
As we said when we reported this production shift, the market will decide if Swedish ‘Cool’ can be built in China and still retain its USP, but if Volvo are successful it’s hard to see how other car makers won’t desert the UK and Europe for China.
That will take some time to measure, but now the first Volvo S90s produced in China are starting to arrive in Europe we’ll start to find out.
With the new China-Europe railway link now in place – effectively a modern day Silk Road – the time taken to deliver cars to Europe is cut by two-thirds as each train delivers 225 cars a time to Zeebrugge, so deliveries aren’t going to be much slower than they would have been from Sweden.
But does a Made in China ‘Premium’ Volvo hold as much cachet as one built in Sweden, or doesn’t it matter anymore?
Volvo S90 Photo Gallery
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mark says
Not going to matter. Designed and marketed from Sweden and made in China won’t matter if the design build is good. People are buying the car, as they have been for decades, not where it’s made. It appears those days are over…as long as the quality perceived, and bought & paid for, shows up at the buyer’s door. With China about to become the second and then, likely, the eventual largest growth market for cars (including luxury), this was bound to happen.