Dozens of new cars launch every year, but the launch of a whole new auto brand is a far rarer event. Geely, the Chinese automaker that also owns Volvo, is rolling out a new one: Lynk & Co—yes, that’s the name—and it’s set to launch globally with a raft of new models and ambitious sales targets. How ambitious? Half a million cars a year by 2021.
The brand will kick off with the production-ready compact SUV that you see here, unveiled yesterday in Sweden alongside a considerably more zany coupe-sedan concept that drops broad hints that something lower and sleeker will follow. The SUV will be known simply as the 01—what we presume is a deliberate contrast to the screwball name of the brand. The company claims the cars will be sold in all major markets including the United States, where sales are promised to start in 2018, a year behind the introduction in other markets.
These are grandiose ambitions, but the carmaking potential certainly exists. All of its models are to use the same Volvo-developed Compact Modular Architecture that will underpin the Swedish brand’s next generation of small cars. Lynk & Co models will be built by Geely in China, but the emphasis is on the fact they’ve been designed and engineered in Europe (as apparently even the Chinese prefer to buy non-Chinese brands).
The 01 sets out much of the visual language for the new brand. Geely’s design director, Peter Horbury, who was formerly in charge of styling for both Volvo and Ford, said we can expect the upcoming family of “four or five” models to include plenty of the same themes, including those fender-mounted headlights and the shark’s-fin detail at the rear of the car. The design identity is based around the themes of “personal,” “respectful,” “new technology,” and one you probably didn’t see coming: “dark.”
At least there are no obvious similarities to the concept that presaged the closely related Volvo XC40. According to Horbury, the cars have been designed without reference to each other. “There are two ways to do a collaboration. Either we show everything and then we each know what the other is doing, or we do it separately,” he said at the unveiling in Gothenburg. “We did the second—the chance of coincidence is pretty slim; we know what Volvo’s new design language is, so steering clear of that meant we’d be okay.”
The Lynk & Co 01 will be bigger than its XC40 sibling, with platform technical boss Mats Fägerhag telling us the 01 will be 175.1 inches long and 72.7 inches wide and will sit on a 106.6-inch wheelbase. Power will come from both three- and four-cylinder gasoline engines, with a four-cylinder diesel being considered for some non-U.S. markets. There also will be a three-cylinder hybrid featuring the same powertrain that we detailed at the launch of the XC40 concept. We don’t have any powertrain output figures, but Fägerhag did state that the base three-cylinder version will weigh 3252 pounds based on the usually optimistic EU-DIN methodology, the 2.0-liter four-cylinder with all-wheel drive and the dual-clutch automatic transmission (DCT) will weigh 3506 pounds, and the three-cylinder hybrid will be 3749 pounds.
Lynk & Co so far is refusing to share any images of the second car and wouldn’t let us snap it at the event. But we can tell you it’s a lower and leaner-looking four-door coupe with a similarly upright front end but without the 01’s towering radiator grille. It keeps the SUV’s high-mounted headlights, though, and—since it’s a concept—was sporting four gullwing doors.
We’ve also been told that the Lynk & Co brand is aimed at the millennial market (surprise!) and that the company will be selling mobility as much as actual cars. We’ll tell you more about its plans, including how the company aims to cuts costs—and prices—with a dealer-free sales and distribution network in a separate post.
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