Missing Lynk

The future of car ownership is here, and it’s subscription-based. TopGear uncovers the automotive equivalent of Netflix.

- Tom Ford

So says Lynk&Co senior vice president Alain Visser, exuding vast warmth and confidence. “With these subscription models, it’s more like your mobile phone contract or Spotify than a traditional lease, much more flexible. There are services like it, but not quite the same…”

We’re sat in Visser’s office in Gothenburg, Sweden, looking out over a frozen harbour at the glass and steel of a new business park, and pondering a new way of looking at car ownership. Or non-ownership. Because Lynk&Co is anything but traditional, even though its cars are based upon current Volvo bones. The office is buzzing, slightly chaotic, filled with dangerous amounts of fizzing young people with glowy skin as yet untarnished by disappointment. Pretty much the antithesis of the usual big automotive mothership. But that’s exactly the point: Lynk&Co is aiming at a new kind of consumer, targeted at people who don’t necessarily like cars. The workforce reflects that, culled from a wide variety of industries, throwing around the kind of on-trend phrases and fashionable trousers that make me wince. It’s all very much how I imagine Google head office might be, or some Silicon Valley high-tech ideas incubator. But Visser is the kind of man it’s hard to remain unmoved by. He’s the right side of evangelical, willing to admit that even he doesn’t understand some of the motivations. Which is why he employs people who do.