Fiat’s Rough Road, and Its Renewal
By
BRYAN BURROUGH
The times out of 10, it’s possible to predict the quality of narrative
books, especially those set in the business world, even before the author sits
down and begins writing — even before the first interview is secure in a tape
recorder. It’s not the idea or the specific angle that is the giveaway. Sad to
say, it’s the access.
Without access, without hours of interviews with the people who populate
the story, a narrative book is all but doomed. You think everyone would be
buying Walter Isaacson’s book if Steve Jobs hadn’t decided to cooperate? Doubt
it. What you get without access is an “outside” book, often cold and
impersonal, typically cobbled together from magazine and newspaper clippings
and interviews with analysts and others who never quite know what’s really
going on.
Jennifer Clark, a onetime Rome bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal,
has a rousing tale to tell in “Mondo Agnelli: Fiat, Chrysler and the Power of a
Dynasty (Wiley & Sons, $29.95). It’s the story of the
great Italian industrialist, Gianni Agnelli; the turnaround at his family’s crown jewel, Fiat, after his
death; and Fiat’s subsequent takeover and government-financed rescue of
Chrysler.
Ms. Clark has a good grasp of her narrative, especially when it remains
in Italy. From the detail in her text and footnotes, it would appear that she
enjoyed decent if unspectacular access to current and former Fiat and Agnelli
executives. And, unfortunately, in the end, that’s what “Mondo Agnelli” ends up
being: decent if unspectacular.
The book’s most serious failing is an inability to shed much new light
on the Chrysler side of the story. “Most of those” at Chrysler, Ms. Clark
notes, declined to be interviewed, which is a shame, given that it’s the
Chrysler angle that will appeal most to American readers.
The Italian sections of the book are stronger than those set in the
United States, so much so that I wonder how good the book might have been had
Ms. Clark corralled a co-author based in Detroit. After Fiat’s 2008-9 takeover
of Chrysler, the surprising turnaround that Fiat’s C.E.O., Sergio
Marchionne then engineers consumes all of 31 pages, the
last 10 percent of the book. I’ve read Fortune articles almost as long, and
with far more insider sources.
The book begins — well, check that a moment. The story begins toward the
end of the 19th century, when a well-to-do Italian cavalryman, Giovanni Agnelli,
gets together with several of his chums in the northern city of Turin and
decides to start an automobile company. The book doesn’t begin in the same
place, though; Ms. Clark is one of those authors who love setting a scene in
the present, then looping back again and again, Tarantino-style, to fill in the
background. This can work in some books, but here I just kept getting confused.
The company that Agnelli founded became Fiat, and Ms. Clark effectively
traces its history and development through world wars and Communist-led
strikes. Giovanni was a devotee and friend of Henry Ford’s, and copied Ford’s
methods wherever possible. When Giovanni died in 1945, control passed to his
grandson, Gianni, who promptly spent the next decade or so romping across the
French Riviera with the likes of Pamela Harriman while professional managers ran things back
in Turin. For the next 40 years, Gianni kept Fiat afloat, no small
accomplishment.
One of the stronger themes that Ms. Clark develops is the importance of
the city’s history in Fiat’s growth. Once the capital of the House of Savoy,
Italy’s royal family until 1946, Turin retained Savoy’s “Prussian” values well
into the 20th century. Loyalty, discipline and hard work were its hallmarks, as
they became Fiat’s.
But while loyalty and discipline kept Fiat alive during Gianni Agnelli’s
reign at the company — and his family in control — they did not foster much in
the way of long-term creativity or ingenuity. By the last years before Gianni’s
death, in 2003, Fiat’s culture had calcified. Modern methods, like the
manufacture of single parts that could be used in different makes of cars,
passed it by. Engineers ran the show; they made the cars, then told the
marketing people how many they needed to sell. Nobody thought of asking the
marketing folks what kind of car people might actually want.
As a result, Fiat churned out lots of fine little cars that not enough
people wanted to buy.
Relief came, unexpectedly, in the person of Gianni’s grandson, John Elkann, who joined
the board in 1997 at the age of 21. Though a neophyte, he nevertheless had the
good sense to hire Mr. Marchionne, then working in Switzerland. Mr. Marchionne
blasted through Fiat’s aging culture, drawing around him scores of young
hotshots who dragged Fiat into the 21st century, and then rescued Chrysler.
Ms. Clark does an excellent job of showing how all this played out internally,
in large part, one senses, because Mr. Marchionne himself helped guide her
through it. Access, access,
access.
In the prose, Ms. Clark embraces too many clichés; the phrase “last but
not least” is a special favorite. But her sentences are crisp and clear, and
she keeps the story moving along nicely, from Giovanni to Gianni to Marchionne.
She is especially good at conjuring a sense of place, whether in the Fiat
factories or the many Agnelli villas and funerals that dot the text.
All in all, “Mondo Agnelli” is worth a read, even if one remains aware
there is probably room for a more ambitious, Ron Chernow-style book on the
Agnellis and their empire to be published someday.
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