WHEN ROMITI DISMISSED GHIDELLA, and the beginning of the end of Italian industry

Today we say goodbye to Cesare Romiti, who was born in 1923 and has perhaps survived more than many Italian industries. A man who, for better or for worse, marked the economic life of Fiat and who marked the first step in the prevalence of finance over industry, marking the beginning of the economic, social, moral and political decline of our country. In a few years Italy has transformed from a country of "Faber" of people who did, who knew what they were doing and were proud of it, into one of parasites that lives and distributes small prebends and often, like sardines, boasts nothing to do and nothing to know.

Not that this is all the fault of Cesare Romiti, but his victory over Vittorio Ghidella, the industrial soul of what at the time was the largest Italian private industry and also a giant worldwide, a sign of what would happen in the future. .

In the 1980s, Ghidella, an engineer, was the director of Fiat Auto, while Romiti was the director of the Fiat group. The position of the engineer and technician seemed secondary, but Ghidella had saved the car with the Panda, the Uno and the Tipo, with the FIRE engine, the first fully robotized engine, with the first common floor plans for different cars, which today common, at the time innovative. Fiat Auto accounted for 70% of the group's profit. Among other things, he had wanted Cesare Fiorio at Lancia and had strongly supported the sporting commitment of the Turin brand in rallies. At that moment, at the end of the 1980s, two paths were outlined:

• the industrial one, which would have seen a succession at the head of the group of the duo Umberto Agnelli – Ghidella;
• the post-industrial solution the one that would have seen Romiti at the helm.

It all started with a skirmish: Ghidella turned to Agnelli to create a prototype of a mini-car, a sort of Smart ante litteram. The prototype is built, but then the road is interrupted because the costs are too high and the car risks being a flop, which is economically the Smart. But Ghidella did an act that was a fatal sin in the FIAT monarchy hierarchy: he acted without warning Romiti. The latter does not react immediately, but orders a thorough inspection of all the car manufacturer's sub-supply chains, also without notifying Ghidella. Engineer Ghidella, like all people of character, had a bad temper, the relationship with Romiti was now broken, and, despite the attempts of the Agnellis, he left in November 1988.

FIAT chose the financial path, the one that then led to Marchionne, the FCA, and in the end to the hidden disposal of the Italian car these days. Luckily Ghidella has been dead for almost 10 years, but he still had time to see the destruction of "his" Lancia and "his" Piaggio. Obviously Romiti is not guilty of the evolution of the Italian economy, but if we now have a null-scientist instead of an engineer at the helm of the country, it is also a little to his credit, or fault.

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The article WHEN ROMITI DISMISE GHIDELLA, and the beginning of the end of the Italian industry comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/quando-romiti-dismise-ghidella-e-linizio-della-fine-dellindustria-italiana/ on Tue, 18 Aug 2020 11:34:06 +0000.