Rebirth of the Volvo

It began as a casual conversation between two women at a Volvo seminar in October, 2001. Three-and-a-half years on it has become one of the most talked-about designs. It's the Volvo YCC (Your Concept Car) and it has won its all-women design team numerous awards since it was unveiled at the Geneva motor show last year. The latest is a Women of the Year award from Automotive News Europe.

Volvo employees Camilla Palmertz and Catarina Munck-Rosenschold were chatting during a break in the seminar, where the topic was how Volvo should cater to women customers. "What about a car designed by an all-women team," they asked themselves. That conversation was to change many of the ways things are done at Volvo.

The project was approved in 2002 and the result was a sleek, user-friendly coupe that has challenged the way the male-dominated industry thinks about women customers.

Since its launch at Geneva, YCC has taken on a life of its own. Volvo's press office counted 1700 articles about the car within six weeks of Geneva, 98 per cent positive. It has been to 15 motor shows and is booked for others through to next year.

"We didn't anticipate anything like this," says Tatiana Butovitsch Temm, communications manager for the project.

Last month, YCC was on show in Moscow. It has been at furniture shows and fashion shows and has has appeared in women's magazines. At many stops, the women - aged between 26 and 45 - found themselves having to explain to people exactly what a concept car is and why car companies build them.

At times, they even worried that potential customers would accuse Volvo of deliberately teasing them by showing them a car they couldn't buy. Results from many surveys show that women liked three features on the Volvo car, in the following order:

* Run-flat tyres (which, after a puncture, enable you to drive a further 150km at 80km/h)

* Lots of storage

* Easy-to-clean paint

Men wanted the same things, but in reverse order.

"From the beginning, the idea was: 'What would it be like if women designed a car?' says project manager Palmertz.

"We believed [in the YCC slogan], 'If you fulfil the expectations of women, you exceed the expectations of men'. Our databases showed that men and women want the same things, but women have longer wish-lists."

Peter Stevens, chief designer at MG Rover in Britain and visiting lecturer at London's Royal College of Art, says: "They didn't want to do girlie stuff.

They wanted to do a car that was real and as on-target as anybody else."

The YCC's features include interchangeable seat pads with varying upholstery; electronic gull-wing doors that open automatically; easy-to-clean paint; capless ball-valve filling points for fuel and wiper fluid; rear seats fold up for extra storage; storage bin between seats for handbag or laptop; electronic parking assist; ergovision system that measures driver's body for proper seat position; run-flat tyres; low-emission, 5-cylinder engine.

Monica Gustafson, director of research and development at Volvo, who was not involved in the project, says: "Car magazines are read by car-lovers, people who are already converted. This car preached to the non-converted."

Designer Rosen uses a computer analogy: "Sometimes I describe the YCC to people who don't know much about it as being like the Macintosh of the computer world instead of the PC. PCs are for people who like to fiddle around and program. Then there's the Macintosh. It just has to work. It eases your life. You don't care about computers, but the computer cares about you."

About 20 per cent of Volvo employees are women, as are 20 per cent of its professional test drivers. Chief executive officer Hans-Olov Olsson would like to see that number increase, especially in the executive ranks.

"The YCC was a statement to encourage females within Volvo," says Olsson. "It has opened the eyes of the whole organisation in a very positive way."

But Rosen doesn't see YCC as a gender-specific project. "I see it as a business case."

The number of women managers in Volvo worldwide represents 15 per cent of the workforce, but Volvo is committed to increase this figure to 20 per cent by 2015.

"From as early as the 1980s Volvo has had groups of female staff testing and assessing new models from a woman's point of view, but now we are ensuring we have a strong female element in our management team as well," said Olsson.

One of the reasons Volvo wishes to improve the number of women in its business is to help to attract more female buyers. In Europe, only 14 per cent of Volvo customers are women, yet research shows that women influence 80 per cent all car purchases.

In the premium car segment, women have increased by 50 per cent in the past five years.

Research shows that these women are more demanding car buyers than men.