Neha Bhatt catches Volvo's Paul de Voijs getting emotional about his first photo with a dinky in the crib, his kids' birth and the first time they said "Volvo"...
Traffic doesn’t bother Paul de Voijs, managing director, Volvo Car India, but that is not particularly surprising. Voijs is someone who didn’t want to pick a home too close to his office in Gurgaon, for he “needs to be in traffic”. While he critically observes the wheels on the road, each time he is out on one, his company has recommended that he doesn’t drive himself. “But I love to drive,” he laughs, “so on weekends, I take my sedan S80 for a spin.”
Having lived away from his country for much of his life, he feels more at home in France, Belgium, Australia but now also in India, where he opened the business for Volvo cars two years ago.
Did he always want to work with cars? “I remember my first picture being one lying in a crib with a dinky. My parents still say when I was four-years-old, I would look outside the window and name car brands. Later, I thought of being a dentist or a cop though, eventually, I studied to be a teacher of linguistics,” he says. But de Voijs realised, soon after, that teaching “was not my cup of tea”.
No, his students didn’t drive him away, but he felt a great sense of disillusionment. “Coaches would blame problems at schools on parents, books or on the children. But they would never admit that it could be because of themselves. I didn’t want to be part of that system. I figured, you need a different kind of motivation to be a teacher,” he says ruefully. In the end, his old love for cars prevailed and here we are.
It goes without saying, that “I’ve always loved Volvos for some reason or the other,” says de Voijs. Nevertheless, he adds, “I miss my Volkswagen Beetle, one of my first cars. It never let me down.” On his list of “cars with a soul” are the Volkswagen 240, the Beetle and Aston Martins. “In Bond films, it’s painful to see cars like the Rolls Royce Silver Shadow and Aston Martin go down that way,” he chuckles. Where there are mean machines, there is adventure, and that is something that symbolises India for him. “It’s been an adventure here, and I would do it again anytime.”
His tall frame is comfortably composed; his articulate answers peppered with brief smiles, a short laugh here and there, as he is, he admits, a great fan of Brit humour. After close to two years in the capital, de Voijs says there is much left to explore — workwise and otherwise. He loves rainy days, as he does the Indian summer, and his evenings are often spent on the terrace of his home in Chattarpur, where he lives with his daughter, looking down at the lovely garden, (though gardening is not his thing) a glass of whisky and a book by the side, a cigar between his fingers.
Of the days gone by, he wistfully speaks of his life marked by none other than cars: his first car (a gift from his grandfather), the first car he damaged at age 6 (when he threw pebbles at his father’s car window), his first crash. “Call me emotional but one of the most important moments for me was also when my first child was born. Then you think you will have to share your love with your other children and you discover additional portions of love for each child. The first time they said papa, the first time they said Volvo, the first time they graduated.”
There is his love for his family and there is his love for cars and it wouldn’t be easy to gain the measure of either.