Volvo prepares to send 'Made in China' cars to US

On the verge of exporting the first "Made in China" cars to the United States, Volvo is determined to show they are as good as vehicles it produces in Europe.
In contrast to its European factories that check a few completed cars from each batch, every vehicle that rolls off Volvo's 3-year-old assembly line in this city in China's southwest goes through a five-hour battery of tests on a driving track.
Once a month, or three times as often as in Europe, Volvo tears apart a finished car in Chengdu to examine the quality of welds and other work.
The effort to persuade Americans to buy a premium car from China is a new step up in Volvo Car Corp.'s campaign to establish itself as a global luxury brand following its 2010 acquisition by Chinese automaker Geely.

"I have heard no customer ask me where his car is built.
It is built by Volvo and is Volvo quality, and of course Chengdu will be exactly the same," said CEO Hakan Samuelsson. "I am quite confident that we will demonstrate that."

The sedan due to be exported from Chengdu is the S60 Inscription, based on Volvo's S60L, a version of the S60 sedan designed for China with an extra eight centimeters (three inches) of rear seat legroom for buyers who have a driver and ride in back. Volvo follows automakers including Cadillac and Mercedes Benz that sell extended sedans for the distinctively Chinese market of "rear seat customers."

In June, the first US-bound S60 Inscriptions are to be shipped down the Yangtze River to Shanghai, then across the Pacific to the United States. Volvo expects to send about 5,000 per year to the United States, according to Samuelsson.
He said Volvo has no plans to "massively export" but, since that model will be produced only in China, will send a few to add to its US lineup.
The decision follows a string of product quality scandals in the US over faulty or tainted Chinese goods ranging from tires to toothpaste.
Still, Americans are comfortable enough buying Chinese-made products that the location of Volvo's factory is unlikely to matter so long as the company maintains its quality standards, said industry analyst Yale Zhang of Auto Foresight, a Shanghai research firm.

"Many things are selling in America that are made in China," said Zhang. "Now it's just another one, a foreign brand that is a car."
Exports of Chinese-produced cars to the United States, even under a European brand, are a milestone for the ruling Communist Party, which wants to see its auto industry expand into global markets.