Volvo vs. Mercedes

I didn’t hear from Volvo for long time, it wasn’t that popular on news. The last news from Volvo was it is owned by Chinese company and we all left Volvo on that topic. And now the Chinese officially owns the Volvo Cars. And they have a very big target! Mercedes S Class.

Volvo is planning to introduce a competitor to Mercedes S Class! No, this is not a joke. Volvo is planning on a car which can compete with Mercedes S Class, BMW 7 Series and Audi A8. As far as I see, Volvo’s new management is aware of automotive business or trying to do something impossible. In other words, what Volvo is planning to do is like dying your hair to blonde and applying to Victoria’s Secret to replace Heidi Klum with you. Because, you both have blonde hair! As usual, this is impossible. Everyone knows this. But Volvo doesn’t know it.

The basic of automotive; you cannot introduce a vehicle which is positioned above the brand’s segmentation. Basically, VW cannot sell Phaëton because VW is a car brand with reasonable price with good quality and Phaëton is a luxury car aiming for Mercedes S Class. The product and the brand are contradicting in this condition. This also happened with Peugeot 607 which was trying to compete with Mercedes E Class. Renault Safrane failed also! Also Mercedes failed with Maybach!

There are many cases like this, if an automotive brand introduces a vehicle which is beyond its environment, it fails! Volvo S90 or S (I want to compete with S Class) will fail! Okay, in Chinese market some people will buy it but just some people. Still in China, people respect German cars more than domestic ones!

Will Volvo fail in future with this pointless car? Definitely YES! And they will lose lots of money and we can imagine the rest. Instead of introducing something with high risk, just upgrade the quality of your current products. They are not bad but they are not that good either!

There is one rule in automotive, you cannot compete with Mercedes S Class! BMW 7 Series still struggling but it is much better, Audi A8 has long time eat S Class’s market share. Jaguar XJ and Maserati Quattroporte are offering something different and they are not aiming to be the leader of this segment. So, this game is over for your Volvo.