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Agnelli had specialized in handling Fiat's finances, and he always knew that he would become chief executive when "circumstances made it available." The moment came when Valletta finally retired at 82 in early 1966. Valletta had groomed another technocrat for his job, but Vice Chairman Agnelli had other ideas. "I decided that I was the best person," he says, "and I took over."
The old guard at Fiat was not quite comfortable with the high-living heir. Early on, too, he suffered a setback. Alfa-Romeo, a rather small, state-owned company that specialized in costlier high-performance cars, made plans for building a southern Italian plant to mass produce medium-priced cars. Agnelli used all his prestige and persuasion to try to block government approval of the Alfa-Romeo expansion, but failed. By 1971, when Alfa-Romeo begins turning out 450,000 cars a year, Fiat will have the novel experience of facing real Italian competition in the medium-priced field ($1,400 to $1,700).
Despite that, Agnelli has shown that he knows how to run an auto company, although he concedes that "I haven't the slightest idea how to build a car." Unhappy about some deadwood that had piled up under Valletta, Agnelli imposed a U.S.-style rule of retirement at 65 and promoted much younger men. He has also radically decentralized management in the belief that "it doesn't do any good to sit on the heads of your executives." Fiat's managers bring him only major decisions, but on those, Agnelli is the ultimate authority. Under him, the company has greatly broadened its product line, introducing seven new models in the past two years, a feat even by U.S. standards. He is also increasing Fiat's international reach. Not only are more Fiats going to more markets, but the company has a construction subsidiary, Impresit, active in the Middle East, and recently joined with several partners, including Lazard Frères and Jersey Standard, in a $40 million syndicate that will invest in Asian industries.
A Certain Pulling Power
Beyond its employees and its 100,000 stockholders, Fiat means more to its country than General Motors means to the U.S., and Agnelli is careful to run it as a public trust. "In a country the size of Italy, a company the size of Fiat has a certain pulling power, which can reflect itself in certain things that are done in the country," he says. "You see it in your contacts with the trade unions and the government, in the way the newspaper you own thinks and writes, in the town in which you live."
In conservative Turin, where the old guard regards the Agnellis as arrivistes—they have had big money for only 70 years—Gianni does little entertaining. An evening at the Agnellis' 30-room palazzo in the center of town often means a movie in a screening room where 30 or 40 films are shown a year. Agnelli is casual about art, but he does "buy when I am tempted." His impressive display of sculpture, Gobelin tapestries, Picassos, Klees and Renoirs shows that he is tempted rather often. In August and September, the Agnellis move to Villar Perosa, 30 miles west of Turin, where they have a lemon and lime 45-room