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The Secret Volvo Doesn't Want You to Know About Their New Cars - YouTube
Channel: Scotty Kilmer
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rev up your engines, welcome to my
Thursday video, where I answer a viewers
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question with an entire video and
today's question comes from John, and
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John asks, hey I was looking at Volvos
the other day and I noticed the
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one being sold here in the United States
was made in China what's up with that
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yes well that's true, here's the history
of Volvo to explain what's happened to
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Volvo, now Volvo started making
cars in Sweden in 1927 and they made
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simple reliable cars in the 1960s an
aunt of mine had a P 1800 those cute
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little sports cars and she got a million
miles out of hers, it had carburetors on
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it it was simple, they were very reliable
very simple car, a lot of people liked
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them they were kind of a niche car and
the Swedes had a very good system for
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building the cars, most of the people in
the factory were trained to do all the
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different parts, so rather than put bolts
on the wheel their entire life and being
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bored out of their mind, they do one part
of the car for a while and then the next
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month they do another part, so they had a
happy labor force that was really
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motivated and they made really good
simple cars, but then in 1985 they
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started designing and making front-wheel
drive cars, before this there were all
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simple rear-wheel drive cars like a
Model T Ford, simple technology that
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worked great and they started to make
them in a larger mass-produced situation
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than they had before, so they're going to
a new technology front-wheel drive and
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building a lot more of them and they had
quite a few problems, in the late 80s and
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the mid and early 90s Volvo's had a lot
of problems with their cars, the
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automatic transmissions had problems,
head gaskets were blowning because they
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were going to a new engine design that
was front-wheel drive and a new
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transmission design that was front-wheel
drive and that led Volvo to have a lot
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of problems especially economically, so
in 1999 Ford Motor Company bought Volvo
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Ford Motor Company own Volvo from 1999
to 2010 and they shared some
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technologies, but still it was pretty
much a failure for Ford because in
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2010 they sold it to Geely a Chinese
company at a really low price they lost
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money on a deal there's no arguing that,
now
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Geely is one of the smaller car
manufacturers in China I believe they
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are like 7th or 8th most
popular or something like that, but they
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decided to take a chance and buy Volvo
so today there's three factories in
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China that build Volvo's but only one
factory in Sweden that builds Volvo's
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and there's also an assembly plant in
South Carolina that builds Volvo, they
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don't do it from scratch, they put them
together that's why it's called an
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assembly plant, and I find that kind of
amusing because years ago I bought this
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Husqvarna chainsaw thinking, oh the
Swedes really know how to make chain
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saws, only to find out when I did the
fine print did a little research this
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chain saw it wasn't made in Sweden, it
was made in South Carolina, so I guess
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the Swedes or today the Chinese have a
thing for either Southern women or a
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warmer climate than where they come from
in Sweden, now I do have to say this
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Husqvarna that I bought that was made in
South Carolina has worked perfectly fine
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for years I've had no problems with it
at all and if anything the quality that
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I've seen in the Volvos that are make
china, is the same or maybe even a little
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better than the stuff that they were
making it Sweden, but the Geely company
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that owns Volvo they're doing big
changes at Volvo
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they are stressing the manufacture of
three and four cylinder gasoline and
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diesel engines and drop in the larger
engine sizes and they recently announced
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that Volvo as of 2019 are only going to
be producing full electric vehicles or
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hybrid electric vehicles like a Toyota
Prius, so take that into consideration I
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would not buy a new Volvo gas or diesel
engine because they're not going to be
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building them anymore and who knows what
kind of upkeep they're gonna have on
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parts and maintenance, because Volvo's
arch competitors for a while at least
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in Sweden was Saab and they went
bankrupt years ago they had enough
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problem with parts here in the United
States being expensive and nobody could
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figure out how to fix them, even when
they were in existence, but now that Saab
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is bankrupt don't go out and buy a Saab
unless you want a lawn ornament, cuz you
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can't get parts for them, hardly anybody's
gonna work on them and they're very
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complex cars and Volvo itself has always
been a relatively high-tech car, so I'm
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not saying they can't make the
technology right, cuz in 2019 they're only
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gonna make electric cars and hybrid cars
they'll probably make really good ones
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but as I talked about before, the
infrastructure for electric cars is
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still a long way away and hybrid cars
are super complex and super expensive to
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fix as they break down, I mean I got a lot
of customers even today that don't buy Volvos
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they lease them, so if you were
thinking about that in the future maybe
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you would lease an electric or hybrid
Volvo car and then you wouldn't have any
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long-term commitments for expensive
repairs as they age, because throughout
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their history,
Volvo's have been pretty reliable cars
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certainly for the first ten years or a
hundred thousand miles of ownership so
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if you're a leasing electric or hybrid
car and it doesn't break while you're
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leasing it what do you care
and realize that the factories that are
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making Volvo's in China are very new
factories, you know they built them in
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just the past few years and they're
really high tech, their main problem is
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finding good labor for them because the
robots build most of it, so most of their
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labor have to be trained engineers that
can fix the robots and maintain them
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while they're doing a 365 days a year 24
hours a day building of the cars, there's
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no downtime with the machines but even
the machines that build the machines are
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gonna break down and need to reprogramming as time goes on
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so now you know Volvo's are made in
China, and since this is the Thursday
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segment where I answer a viewers
question, place your own question on the
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YouTube comments below and I'll pick the
best ones to make a single video to
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answer your questions, and where else can
you find a guy with 50 years experience
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of fixing cars to answer your own
question with a video, so if you never
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want to miss another one of my new car
repair videos, remember to ring that Bell!
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