Geely's folksy Li dubbed China's Henry Ford

Li Shufu, dubbed the "Chinese Henry Ford," last week was named chairman of Volvo Cars ahead of the expected completion of his Geely Holding Group's takeover of the Swedish auto icon from Ford.

The $1.8 billion purchase -- plus an additional $900 million in investment -- was signed in Sweden in March and only awaits approval by Chinese regulators, which is expected any day now.

It is China's largest offshore auto deal, and the latest example of its growing clout on the international stage.

The deal also reflects Beijing's aspirations to build global brands that carry both prestige and higher profit margins in a drive to transform China from workshop of the world to a name that equates with quality and innovation.

By all accounts Li, son of a farmer from China's eastern Zhejiang province, was a driving force behind the unlikely takeover of a world renowned auto brand by a relative unknown.

When Li, now 47, first started making cars in 1997, he dismissed critics who said he had no track record. Making a car wasn't hard, he said; it was just "four wheels and two sofas."

His plain-folks persona shares some traits with Ford, including a childhood on the farm and a scrappy determination to build a car-making behemoth from nothing. So perhaps he was destined to buy Volvo from the company that Henry Ford built.

But it was a series of unfortunate events in the world that led Geely, which means lucky in Mandarin, to buy the loss-making Swedish brand from Ford. Much of the developed world had tumbled into financial crisis, Ford was posting one record loss after another, and other leading automakers such as GM were on the ropes as well.

Geely, meanwhile, was in the black and rising rapidly in fast-growing China.

A mechanical engineer by training, Li lives in a modest apartment in Beijing, said Lawrence Ang, executive director of Zhejiang Geely Holding' publicly traded arm, Geely Automobile (0175.HK).

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Now one of China's richest men, Li had humble beginnings. After high school, he used a small graduation gift to buy a camera and open a photo studio in his village.

He put earnings from that business into an operation salvaging gold from discarded appliances before moving into the refrigerator parts business in 1984.