Wheel Play.(Column)(Column)

Byline: Matt Davis

If you live in Italy for a while, you start to notice that even though Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (i.e. ``The Italian Car Factory of Turin'' or Fiat) is no longer the biggest or most powerful corporation here, every native Italian over the age of, say, 25 respects it implicitly as if it were. Honorary chairman Giovanni Agnelli is rarely called by his name, instead being referred to as l'Avvocato (The Lawyer), and his grandfather Giovanni, who founded Fiat back in 1899, is referred to reverently as Il Senatore.

Imagine what might happen if General Motors was the only big carmaker in the United States, owned all the factories building cars therein and was going through the horror that Fiat is facing, and you'll have some sense of how weird things are over here. For the month of September in comparison to September 2001, car production in Italy was down 51 percent and Fiat sales worldwide were down 7.5 percent. The value of the 20 percent of Fiat GM got in March 2000 in exchange for $2.4 billion worth of GM common stock has proceeded to implode to 10 percent of its original value and is showing no signs of a comeback soon.

Mass layoffs, an intensely uncomfortable and embarrassing practice here, are a pill Fiat and Italians have to swallow. And there are 8100 more layoffs on the way. Factories are shutting down, including the famous Alfa Romeo plant at Arese that was already running on fumes. Some of them are in the deep south where Fiat has been the only good job many could find since the '60s. At least the Italians don't react to this as the South Koreans might. Italians are inclined to stop short of serious violence; their government representatives don't slug ...