Volvo plans China luxury push

飞雪寒冰

Volvo Car Corp’s new chief executive said he planned to push the Swedish brand’s vehicles upmarket and make China its biggest market within five years.
沃尔沃汽车公司(Volvo Car Corp)新首席执行官表示，计划在5年内将该瑞典品牌汽车升级为高档品牌，并将中国打造成自己最大市场。

While Germany’s luxury brands are reporting rising sales and deriving a large portion of their profits from China, Volvo sold just 22,000 cars last year in the world’s largest vehicle market and aims to sell about 30,000 there in 2010.
在德国各豪华品牌汽车报告在华销售额不断增长，并贡献相当大一部分利润时，沃尔沃去年在这个全球第一大汽车市场仅售出2.2万辆汽车，2010年销售目标约为3万辆。

飞雪寒冰

Volvo plans to bolster its position with the help of Geely, the Chinese carmaker whose parent company completed its purchase of Volvo from Ford Motor for $1.5bn earlier this month. “We are latecomers,” Stefan Jacoby, the carmaker’s chief executive, told the Financial Times. “In five years it [China] might be the strongest market globally.”
沃尔沃计划借吉利汽车(Geely)之力提升自己的地位——本月早些时候，母公司吉列完成了以15亿美元对福特汽车(Ford Motor)旗下品牌沃尔沃的收购。“我们是后来者，”沃尔沃新首席执行官斯特凡•雅各比(Stefan Jacoby)对英国《金融时报》表示。“5年内，（中国）或许会成为全球最强劲的市场。”

Volvo’s biggest market is the US, where the brand has failed to match the strong growth of its competitors, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi, in part because it builds no cars there.
在沃尔沃第一大市场美国，该品牌的增长表现不及宝马(BMW)、梅塞德斯-奔驰(Mercedes-Benz)和奥迪(Audi)等竞争对手强劲，部分原因在于沃尔沃在美国没有生产基地。

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Volvo sold just under 335,000 vehicles worldwide last year, fewer than any of the German luxury brands and 11 per cent fewer than in 2008.
去年，沃尔沃在全球售出不到33.5万辆汽车，较2008年销量下降11%，比德国任何一个奢侈品牌都少。

In China, Volvo makes its S40 executive compact car and a long-wheelbase version of its S80 saloon, at Ford and Mazda’s joint venture with Chang’an, based at Chongqing. It plans to continue building both models there for their current production generation.
在中国，沃尔沃在福特和马自达(Mazda)与长安汽车在重庆成立的合资工厂，生产其S40小型公务车和轴距加长版S80轿车。沃尔沃计划，将继续在该工厂生产上述两种车型。

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China requires foreign carmakers that want to assemble vehicles in the country to form joint ventures with Chinese carmakers. Geely’s purchase, which had the support of the Chinese government, makes Volvo the industry’s first Chinese-owned luxury car brand. Geely plans to build at least two car plants and an engine plant to make Volvos in the country.
中国规定，希望在华装配汽车的外国汽车制造商必须与中国制造商成立合资企业。吉利收购沃尔沃得到了中国政府的支持，让沃尔沃成为汽车业首个由中国拥有的豪华汽车品牌。吉利计划在中国至少再建两家汽车工厂和一家发动机工厂生产沃尔沃。

“Having a Chinese partner and shareholder like Geely offers a lot of opportunities to do things more pragmatically than maybe other companies are doing through joint ventures,” said Mr Jacoby, formerly Volkswagen’s head of US operations.
曾任大众汽车(Volkswagen)美国业务负责人的雅各比表示：“拥有吉利这样的中国合作伙伴和股东，为我们提供了许多机会，比其它公司通过合资企业做事情更务实。”

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This month, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely and Volvo, told the Financial Times he wanted Volvo to build a large saloon like BMW’s 7 Series and the S-class of Mercedes-Benz, and make all the brand’s vehicles more luxurious.
本月，吉利和沃尔沃董事长李书福对英国《金融时报》表示，他希望沃尔沃能制造像宝马7系和梅塞德斯S级那样的大型豪华轿车，让沃尔沃的各个车型都更加奢华。