Word: fiat
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Agnelli is also looking to Eastern Europe, where the auto market is underdeveloped and potentially great. Tito's Yugoslavia builds Fiats under a licensing arrangement, and Poland recently signed a similar agreement to build "Polski-Fiats." Russia has hired Fiat to help it construct and run an $800 million plant at Togliattigrad on the Volga. The huge plant is scheduled to begin producing Fiats by early 1970, and work up to an annual output of 600,000. "It is hard for Italian Communists to complain about Agnelli," says Rome University Economist Paolo Sylos-Labini. "After all, if Fiat...
...economy." When Agnelli tells people that he "looks after a few matters for my brothers and sisters," he refers to his stewardship of I.F.I. (Istituto Finanziario Industriale), a family holding company that looks after a sizable chunk of Italy. I.F.I, holds the family's 25% controlling interest in Fiat, plus a 50% interest in Cinzano vermouth and investments in cement, chemicals, shipping, insurance, finance, assorted hotels and real estate...
...little coal or iron. When, in 1947, some Italian leaders requested a World Bank loan to build a steel industry, the bankers rather snidely advised them to stick to growing tomatoes. But Industrialist Oscar Sinigaglia, then head of the state-owned Finsider steel complex, landed a big order from Fiat and went on to locate his mills at ports, where ships bring in coal and steel from the cheapest foreign sellers. Finsider is now Europe's biggest steel producer, and last year Italy's output rose from 17.4 million tons to 18.7 million, fifth highest in the world...
...better. His family has long flourished in Italy's subAlpine Piedmont, a region noted for its soldiers and industry. Grandfather Giovanni Agnelli gave up a military career in 1899 and founded, with partners, Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino.* After some early hard times, Giovanni took personal control. Soon Fiat prospered on the strength of racing successes. It absorbed many early rivals and moved from artisan to assembly-line production, which enabled it to build 70% of the Italian Army's World War I trucks. The company went on to furnish Mussolini's military, and Il Duce rewarded...
Agnelli went to work under Vittorio Valletta, a paternal technocrat who had been old Giovanni Agnelli's choice to rebuild Fiat after the war. With Mussolini gone, Valletta found an even better patron: the ordinary Italian consumer. In 1953, he brought out the tiny, tinny Fiat 500 model. Italy's first cheap mass-produced car, the 500 fit Valletta's prescription for something that could be made at the lowest possible cost, yet still be "a complete automobile." Italians dubbed it the "Mickey Mouse," and it proved to be for them what Ford's Tin Lizzie...