Is Volvo Swedish, American or Chinese? In 1924, Assar Gabrielsson, a sales manager and Gustav Larson, an engineer, had the idea to build cars that people could drive on Sweden’s rough roads and during Sweden’s severe winters. Three years later, the first Volvo car was manufactured. This Swedish company quickly became a well-known producer of cars and commercial vehicles, including buses, trucks and heavy construction machinery. By 1945 Volvo had become well-known outside Sweden, but they were too expensive for most people. 54 years later, in 1999, Volvo sold the car manufacturing part of its company to Ford Motor Company, America, for $6.45 billion. Ford thought it would make a big profit from this deal, but it did not. So only 11 years later it sold Volvo Cars to the Chinese motor manufacturer, Geely Automobile. For Volvo, manufacturing cars in China seemed essential as it wanted to increase its global yearly sales to 800,000 cars by 2020. However, under China’s regulations, foreign car manufacturers can only produce cars in China when the company is jointly owned and run by a Chinese company. Thus the deal was made with Geely. The Hangzhou-based company not only paid Ford $1.8 billion, but also invested another $900 million in the production of Volvo. It promised to change Volvo from a company that was making a loss to a company that would make a profit. According to their plan, Geely will use Volvo’s technology in its vehicles and build a factory that can produce 300,000 cars per year. However, there are some difficulties. Firstly, Geely does not have the know-how to manage a large company like Volvo. Last year Geely only had a turnover of $2.4 billion, whereas Volvo’s turnover was $12.4 billion. Secondly, Geely only exports a small number of cars to other developing countries, so it is not known as a global player. Thirdly, reducing costs and keeping the standards will not be easy. China is the world’s largest automobile market with sales of 16 million in 2010. Geely plans to sell between 200,000 and 300,000 Volvo cars per year. This is a very optimistic plan as only 30,000 Volvos were sold in China in 2009. Working with words Find the words in the text that mean the same as these words. 1. means of transport _____ 2. very dear _____ 3. famous ____ 4. rules _____ 5. together _______ 6. worldwide ______ 7. business _____ 8. knowledge _______ 9. income ________ 10. hard ______ 11. produce ______ 12. sell abroad _____ Use the words you have written in above exercise to fill in the gaps in following sentences. 13. It is easy to repair a car if you have the necessary ______. 14. Last year Europe suffered a really ______ winter which closed a lot of airports. 15. The _____ side of the business is run by Mr. Brown. 16. Shanghai's streets are always packed with _____ of all kinds. 17. If you want to reach your target you must make a _____ of over $800,000 every year. 18. Apple and Amazon are very successful _______ players.