Volvo quits the O.C., heads for far Rockleigh

Into the group went Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston-Martin—and for good measure, even Lincoln (with Mercury tagging along for the ride). Ford even went so far as to build a snazzy new headquarters for the PAG out in Irvine, California, ostensibly to observe first-hand California’s car culture (hint: it’s quite a bit different than Michigan’s).

That was then, this is now. When Alan Mulally took over the reins at Ford, he took a good hard look at how the various pieces of the Ford empire fit together, and decided that some of them weren’t core parts of the whole. Suddenly Aston-Martin was on the auction block. That brand having been sold, Jaguar and Land Rover were next on the slightly-used-brands-for-sale list, and were subsequently sold to India’s Tata Motors.

Ford has denied any interest in selling Volvo, so for the moment, its fortunes are solidly connected with the Blue Oval. Having sold off most of Volvo’s PAG stablemates (and having relocated Lincoln-Mercury back to Dearborn), it must be pretty lonely there in Irvine with only the Volvo staff rattling around the place.

So Volvo Cars of North America LLC is relocating their North American headquarters out of Southern California to their new digs in Rockleigh, N.J., before the end of 2008. This is not as out-of-the-blue as it sounds, however, since Volvo already has a presence in Rockleigh—their customer care, parts and service operations have remained in Rockleigh, even when their corporate overlords made the trek to SoCal years ago. In fact, Volvo has a long and storied presence in the Garden State; its U.S. headquarters opened first in Newark, in 1956, later moving to Englewood Cliffs, and finally setting up shop in Rockleigh back in 1964.

via canadaeast