Word: fiat
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...Continent's booming trade. Madrid, its population doubled in 20 years, wears the pink of great new brick apartment houses stretching far to the north and south. Its streets, once asphalt museums for antiquated jalopies, are now clogged with gleaming SEATs, the Spanish-made version of the Italian Fiat. The cars are still largely for the rich; a better index to the general improvement is the horde of buzzing motor scooters steered dauntlessly through the city streets by clerks, factory foremen, salesmen, shopkeepers - the nucleus of the new middle class slowly taking shape in Spain...
Beating the Sneer. Each of its three biggest members entered the Common Market with one big auto manufacturer that dominated its market: Volkswagen, with 40% of production in Germany; government-owned Renault, with 35% in France; Fiat, with 90% in Italy. When the Six first got together, there was widespread suspicion that the major European automakers would succumb to the Continental fondness for cartels and divide the car market into cozy segments. Instead, they have reacted like tiger sharks...
...Fiat, which had long sheltered behind a tariff wall so high that even rich Italians could scarcely afford a foreign car, greeted the Common Market by slashing its prices at home and doubling its dealer force in the rest of Europe. Volkswagen, which before the advent of the Common Market regarded France and Italy as lost causes, now has plans for 120 French dealerships, and by relentlessly efficient servicing is slowly overcoming the longstanding Italian sneer that the beetle is brutta (ugly...
...Germany, France's Renault is fighting to overtake Fiat as the most popular foreign car by offering "financing up to 24 months-with only 25% down." From the outside, Ford is selling so aggressively in France that its English models outsell Volkswagen and all other foreign cars...
Many Europeans believe that ultimately the European auto industry will undergo a Detroit-like shrinkage from the present 50-odd manufacturers to a handful of giant firms. Against that day, such native European firms as Fiat are keeping a wary eye on Detroit itself. For if Britain does join the Common Market, a merger of the British and German subsidiaries of Ford (Ford and Taunus) and a similar merger by General Motors (Vauxhall and Opel) could present Europe with two readymade automotive giants backed by Detroit's vast reservoirs of money and skill...