June sales for Sweden-based Volvo rose 41% year over year in June and are up 24.4% for the first six months of the year. The numbers are closer to the sales totals of Tesla than GM or Ford, but the company’s all-new XC90 mid-size crossover has sold nearly 16,000 units in the first half of the year compared with total 2015 sales of the previous model of 12,777 units. In 2014, the XC90 sold fewer than 4,000 units in the United States.
The 2016 version of the car won Motor Trend’s SUV of the Year award last November and the editors noted that the all-new version “sets a new standard for safety.” For those of us who remember the 1970s and 1980s, that is how Volvo positioned itself and through some near-death experiences since then, that positioning has been maintained.
Volvo is owned by China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group which acquired the company from Ford in 2010 for $1.8 billion. Ford paid $6.45 billion to acquire Volvo’s auto division in 1999 when the Swedish firm was building 400,000 vehicles a year. That was just a year after the $38 billion merger between Chrysler and Daimler-Benz. Neither deal worked out as planned however.
The average transaction price for a Volvo in May was just under $48,000 according to Kelley Blue Book (KBB). That’s a year-over-year increase of 8.5%, the largest increase among all automakers. Mitsubishi, up 7.5%, is closest, and GM is third, up 5.4% year over year.
Through May KBB reported sales in the mid-size luxury SUV/crossover segment were up just 0.5% year over year to just over 812,000 units. Volvo’s other top seller, the XC60, is included in the compact luxury SUV/crossover segment, but sales are down nearly a third through the first five months of 2016.
How far can the XC90 carry Volvo? It’s an IIHS Top Safety Pick+ vehicle and the company has said that after 2020, no one will be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo. Will that be enough to keep driving sales up?
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