Volvo was one of the biggest industry success stories of the 2010s, doing what no other car maker has done in the modern era by breaking out of the mainstream and becoming a true premium player.
The cars, designed by Thomas Ingenlath, looked great and the business performed even better, setting sales records six years in a row under CEO Håkan Samuelsson, to whom we awarded our top Issigonis Trophy at the 2020 Autocar Awards.
Both departed in subsequent years, as Volvo forged a new path in trying to become a bona fide tech company that just happened to make cars under ex-Blackberry executive Jim Rowan.
The EX90 that best typifies this ethos spearheaded Rowan’s new era. It looked somewhat like a taxi, with its big lidar sensor on the roof, and its development was heavily delayed due to its technical complexity. At launch, it still felt unfinished.
To meet Rowan in person and hear why such radical pre-emptive change for the future was needed not just at Volvo but at all car companies was compelling. Yet the message got lost in trying to pivot more than 40,000 employees into such a different way of making cars. It seemed the discipline had been lost at Volvo and it had forgotten its core business was to make and sell cars that you would want to choose over a BMW or a Mercedes-Benz.
Hence Samuelsson’s return to get that discipline back. Given the lengthy development cycles in the industry, we won’t fully see his impact on the cars for a while yet. Nor that of Ingenlath, who also returned to the company recently.
But their presence is enough to provide the reassurance that better days are ahead again for Volvo. The band is back together.
