In China, the front seat takes a back seat, as Volvo’s Thomas Ingenlath discovered when the carmaker’s Chinese chairman tested a vehicle he helped design.
Instead of going to the driver’s side and trying out the steering wheel, Li Shufu walked around the car, opening the opposite side rear door. The back seat was where a man of Mr Li’s stature was used to seeing the world, with someone else driving. “That tells you where the priorities are,” says Mr Ingenlath, Volvo’s chief designer. “The focus is not on the driver’s seat, but on the other areas of the car . . . that completely changed our perspective.”
Since being bought by Mr Li’s Geely Corporation in 2010, Sweden-based Volvo has become a case study in having to adapt western designs for Chinese consumers, who in Volvo’s case are also the group’s owners. But the global automotive industry has been working towards pleasing Chinese customers since at least 2009, when China became the world’s largest market for cars.