Originally from the UK, Odell has worked as head of operations for Ford Europe. He will take over as CEO for Volvo Cars on October 1st, according to Volvo spokesperson Maria Bohlin.
His new office will be in Gothenburg, Volvo Cars’ main base of operations in Sweden.
Arp, who worked previously for the publicly listed industrial conern Trelleborg, served as head of Volvo Cars in 2005, replacing Hans-Olov Olsson.
Volvo Cars is owned by US automaker Ford, and posted a loss of 1.6 billion kronor ($246 million) in Ford’s mid-year report which was released in July.
A month earlier, Volvo Cars gave notice that 1,200 employees would be losing their jobs.
At the time, Arp was optimistic in a conversation with the TT news agency, saying that the losses would be reduced during the second half of the year.