Volvo Australia wants to bookend its mainstream models with both green and performance cars.
That's the 'take out' from our interview with local boss Matt Braid. Proudly showing off the company's locally packaged S60 R Polestar 'hottie' last week, Braid said the company would look to offer both performance and green options as it seeks to grow its sales share and conquest new customers Down Under.
Braid told motoring.com.au that Volvo needed to offer a number of streams of products to its customers in Australia. Though the company will look to add more super-economical DRIVe models in the future, there could also be more Polestars.
"DRIVe is certainly a cemented part of the range on the global scale. We’ve tapped into it with C30 [and] as more vehicles become available that are probably more suitable to our market and the stage of our market {we will add more models]," Braid told motoring.com.au.
"This [DRIVe] technology’s great but are we [Australian car buyers] really ready for it yet... We’re certainly confident we’ll [Volvo Australia] be prepared that when the market does come that way... We’ll have the resources and obviously the equipment to provide and obviously maximise opportunities in the market when that turns. But at the moment we, we need that [DRIVe] strategy, we need a performance strategy... The Australian market isn’t going purely down the CO2 route yet," Braid commented.
Nonetheless Braid says Volvo Australia will add the company's ground-breaking V60 plug-in diesel hybrid as soon as possible.
"We would love to have it... I don’t think it will be a high volume car at this stage, but certainly from a point of view of demonstrating where the brand can go... we’d love to have it.
"...Realistically I think it’s going to be 2013 before we touch it." Braid said.
But it won't be a core element of the brand, he says.
"I think there’s -- if you look at the way Volvo currently stands, not so much in Australia but globally on fuel efficiency, environmental powertrains -- there is a raft of choices... I think plug-in will be one aspect of that overall strategy, but it won’t be the core aspect necessarily. In saying that too, there’s stuff we haven’t seen [in market] yet… [But] There’s certainly a desire to become arguably the world’s most environmentally friendly car brand."
On the other side of the coin, Braid sees performance as important for the local market. He says Polestar is a way to extend the 'dress-up only' R brand. Though he reiterates the sole S60 Polestar is purely a toe in the water and not a 'test case'.
"At this stage there’s been no performance upgrades to R design [models] and that’s what we’re trying to do with the Polestar [S60]… Where the Polestar situation goes next and where it can take us -- both from a point of view of an Australian approach and obviously a global approach, that’s a big question mark.
"I wouldn’t say [it's a test case]. I think we’re [Volvo Australia] probably at the leading edge... And we’re asking more questions than maybe some other markets are... We’re certainly putting our hand up first and foremost, I think, in front of many other markets.
Braid says performance models are "something we believe we need".
"We’re [Australia] a performance market in the global scheme of things – so... we’d love to have a look at it.”
Braid says the DRIVe to Polestar spectrum would be something he'd like to apply across the Volvo model line but cautions there are still many pieces that need to fall into place.
"There’s lots of ingredients that would have to come together to be able to achieve that. I mean, I’d love to be able to have a ‘go to whoa’ type scenario."
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