Fiat by Giorgio Garuzzo

Author:Giorgio Garuzzo
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Published: 2014-03-27T18:30:00+00:00

The Inconsistency of Fiat Auto in the Rest of Europe

If the Italian sales network was in revolt, in the rest of Europe it was falling to pieces. This malaise had ancient roots. Overall, market shares were of inconsistent size in most European countries and appeared negligible, if measured in their own segment, because they were spread over different models from three different marques. In the past, only the Fiat Uno had attained acceptable sales volumes. This structural situation put the survival of dealers at risk. Some decisions taken in the past struck me as incomprehensible because they seemed to ignore the basic weakness. For example, the mandates of the three marques, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, and Lancia, had been kept strictly separate, presumably to ensure that each had a different image, but this had prevented any synergy in services. Despite the high expenses, it had proved impossible to give each marque a clear personality in the eyes of the European public, also because the management of advertising had been improvised, without coherent and decisive long-term messages.18

Poor quality had done the rest. Let one sensational case stand for all the others. One ill-fated day in the early Eighties, three thousand Lancia Betas were delivered to British customers after having spent months languishing in the vast lots facing the Channel. The quality of electrophoresis, the system used to protect bodywork panels, was still very poor in the factory in Chivasso, and the UK-bound Betas, attacked by rust, were falling to pieces. The destruction of the marque’s reputation was complete and irreversible, also owing to the smear campaign spread by the competition, so much so that the term “rusty” was inexorably associated with the brand. Cantarella had to decide the total withdrawal of the Lancia marque from the UK, after vain attempts at recovery and despite the investment of tens of billions of lire required to equip all the versions with right-hand drive.

The troubles of Fiat Auto’s sales networks abroad started with top sales management. The heads of the franchises were almost all Italians transplanted abroad, often very modest people who in the headquarters of Fiat and Fiat Auto were deemed to be of secondary importance as compared with functionaries operating in Italy: the bureaucratic management of personnel did not recognize the difficulties encountered in sales, but measured the importance of every position in terms of the number of units sold!

As soon as I was back in corso Marconi, I began to travel around Europe to meet with those responsible for the local activities of the Sectors.19 On those occasions it was easy for me to assess people, on seeing them in action in their own work environment, and I was convinced that the situation was hair raising. Every time I mentioned the problem with Cantarella, I would arouse his wrath at my “interference” in Fiat Auto’s affairs. Until one day he wrote me a letter of formal warning regarding a contact I had had in Germany. Never had a CEO been so disrespectful

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