So Happy Together

Marriages in the auto business are typically disastrous. But Sweden’s Volvo and China’s Geely are making it work.

- Bryan Gruley And Jamie Butters

Hakan Samuelsson, the chief executive officer of Volvo Car Group, is sitting in the master bedroom in the home of a suburban Stockholm family he’s never met. His company has rented the modernist three-story house of blond wood and whitewashed walls for the media introduction of Volvo’s new station wagon, the V60.

Alternating groups of American, British, German, and Scandinavian journalists crowd in for short question-and-answer sessions. It’s Samuelsson’s first and probably last bedroom interview, but he plays along. “You can lie down and relax,” he tells reporters, gesturing to the queen-size bed as a grin creases his craggy face.

Outside, light February snow flutters past willows and pines onto a silver V60 bathed in camera lights in the driveway. It was designed, like so many Volvos, for suburban families seeking safe, reliable transportation. But the peculiar setting for this press event is meant to suggest that today’s Volvo is a far cry from the Volvo of a decade ago, when it was losing money, selling fewer cars by the year, and watching its talent for design and engineering get watered down by then owner Ford Motor Co. Even the staid wagon, the embodiment of classic Volvo, has taken on a new look in the sleek, low V60. A Gear Patrol review called it— remember, this is a station wagon—“positively lust-worthy.”