Mondo Agnelli by Jennifer Clark

Author:Jennifer Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2011-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

A week before Christmas in 2003, some 600 people crammed into a courtyard at Corso Como 10 in Milan. From the outside, the pale yellow building doesn’t look much different from the other traditional ones alongside it on a street running to the squat and ugly Garibaldi train station. Once you get past the plants that discretely block the view of the courtyard, however, an expensive boutique, an art gallery, and a chic café await. During Milan’s fashion week—when buyers, press, and executives descend on the city to view runway shows of upcoming collections—Corso Como and the nearby Le Langhe restaurant become fashion central.

The crowd that evening was for a party, hosted by Vogue, to celebrate the launch of a zippered sweatshirt with a vintage Fiat logo emblazoned across the chest in huge letters.3 The company had done little to distinguish itself in the time since Umberto and his new CEO, Giuseppe Morchio, had taken over. In midyear, it had unveiled its latest recovery plan that called for closing 12 of its 138 factories worldwide, raising almost two billion euros in cash, and investing in new car models.4 Fiat’s image was at low ebb. It was hardly the time to throw a party for a young, hip crowd of television celebrities, fashionistas, models, and heirs and heiresses to Italy’s industrial fortunes,5 and even less likely that they would turn up. But turn up they did.

Lapo Elkann, Gianni’s red-haired, blue-eyed 26-year-old grandson, was the driving force in the events that led up to that evening. The idea of attempting to put the words Fiat and hip in the same sentence would not have occurred to many people that year, but Lapo had been working on this project for months. He left his high-profile job in New York City as Henry Kissinger’s personal assistant to come back to Italy in 2002 to spend time with his grandfather during Gianni’s illness, and to work at Fiat at a time when the company’s future was shaky.

When Lapo got to Fiat in mid-2002, conditions were “difficult, complicated, harsh, and hard,” he recalled later. Lapo was working in the marketing department, but the auto company had few cars to market. His goal was to maximize his results on a shoestring budget. His main challenge was to be creative while being fearless. And his first task at hand was to bring back a sense of pride to the people inside the company, starting with the workers on the factory floor.

Lapo decorated his office in Mirafiori with photographs of Winston Churchill, Mao, and New York City. What he found at Fiat was a company full of people who were deeply fearful about the future, and who passionately wanted to see the company pull through. He found a design team steeped in heritage, and a brand that could tap into deep wellsprings of pride, affection, and innovation. All auto companies are populated by employees who are car nuts and wild about the company they work for. Fiat had all that and was a national icon and a municipal institution to boot.

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