Informed, Innovative, Invincible

A Long-serving International Volvo Cars Veteran, Nick Connor Drove Sales and Worked Relentlessly to Transform Its Uk Business Over 22 Years. Now Managing Director of Volvo Car Australia, He’s Applying That Same Tenacity and Determination to Enhance Volvo’s Market Share in Australia.

- Holly Johnson

Volvo Car Australia Managing Director Nick Connor fell into the automotive industry by accident. “I was working as a solicitor in London when one of my many automotive clients invited me to become its in-house lawyer – that’s how I came to Volvo in 1995. After a few years, our managing director at the time called my bluffand said, ‘You think you’re so clever, why don’t you do more than just advise us and actually take on an operational role?’

“I’m not entirely sure whether he called my bluff or I called his in the end,” Nick laughs. “So, I took over as Network and Customer Service Director and then Sales Director and eventually Managing Director of Volvo Car UK.”

As head of the company’s fourth-largest market globally, Nick led a massive 60 per cent sales increase before being named the inaugural CEO of Sweden’s Polestar in 2016. There, he oversaw its establishment as a standalone brand, charged with the design, development and production of separately branded, high-performance electrified cars after it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Volvo Cars in 2015.

Now based in Sydney, Nick hopes to achieve the same sales success at Volvo Car Australia, which ended 2017 with 4,681 sales – down nearly 21 per cent on the year before.