#Italy

While America is glued to the flat screen, Fiat gets all the headlines. The other day, Sergio Marchionne had dropped a mention that the HQ of a merged Fiat & Chrysler could move to the U.S. Stateside, this didn’t make much waves. It was buried in shyster-gate. In Italy, all hell broke loose. Fiat emigrating la bella Italia for America? Porca miseria!

Germany’s auto motor und sport magazine caught Lamborghini’s Murcielago-successor Aventador in the wild, only covered by some artsy pasties on the paintjob. It should be available for viewing without the camouflage at the Geneva Auto Salon.

Fiat split its auto business from the rest of its industrial operations today, creating two new companies: Fiat and Fiat Industrial. Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne announced the move as a way for Fiat to unlock its share value and concentrate on its core business, telling the AP [via Newser]

This is a very important moment for Fiat, because it represents at the same time a point of arrival and a point of departure. Faced with the great transformations in place in the market, we could no longer continue to hold together sectors that had no economic or industrial characteristic in common.

But with Fiat Industrial taking care of the truck-and-tractor side of the business independently, Fiat SpA is focusing on the task at hand: Chrysler. With a 35 percent stake in the bailed-out American automaker in the bag, Fiat is aiming for a controlling stake when Chrysler’s IPO hits the markets later this year. And though the spin-off of FIat’s non-automotive business opens the door for a full merger of Fiat and Chrysler, Marchionne denies that a full merger will take place, saying only that

I don’t know whether it is likely, but it is possible that we’ll go over the 50 percent mark if Chrysler decides to go to the markets in 2011. It will be advantageous if that happens.

But don’t mind Sergio’s equivocation. Fiat will almost certainly snap up the remainder of a controlling stake by the end of this year. Here’s why…

With some 60k Italian jobs and a $20b investment at stake, Fiat’s “Fabbrica Italia” renovation of its home-country production plans are crucial to the integration of Fiat and Chrysler. And rather than negotiating a national labor agreement with Italy’s fractious unions, Fiat has been revamping its Italian plants on a case-by-case basis. This strategy has already backfired at the firm’s Naples-based Pomigliano plant, where the Italian metalworker’s union Fiom decried Fiat’s plans as “discriminatory.” Since then, Fiat has moved onto its Mirafiori plant in Turin, where Fiat wants to build the next-generation Compass/Patriot models for Chrysler and a derivative SUV for Alfa-Romeo on the firm’s new “Compact Wide” platform. And once again, Fiom is up to its old tricks. The WSJ reports that every other union has approved the new Mirafiori deal with Fiat, except Fiom, which has been banned from representing workers at the plant, pending a January vote by workers. However, Fiom represents some 22 percent of Mirafiori workers, and the union has announced an eight-hour strike for January 28.

When we reported last month that a strange assortment of Indian and Chinese truck builders is after the Italian design house and coach builder Pininfarina, we asked what you probably thought: “What do all these truck makers want to do with a company that designed Ferraris?” Now there’s a Chinese company that can put a hot design house to better use: Beijing’s BAIC.

Usually, unions take to the streets when their company is supposed to be sold. In Italy, unions demand the sale of their company.

In Milan, union representatives marched to the German consulate and handed the consul a letter in which they demand that Fiat lets Alfa go and that Volkswagen takes over.” With the letter delivered, the demonstrators grabbed megaphones and shouted: “Alfa has no chance with Fiat. We want Volkswagen!” Scusami?

The relationship between automakers and automotive journalists can be extremely difficult, as automakers often hold access to cars hostage based on a journalist’s coverage of them. If, as an automotive journalist, you like every car you drive, the world is your oyster. Automakers invite you to every launch, PR guys gaze longingly into your eyes, and all is right with the world. If, on the other hand, you write negatively about a car, you can find yourself watching the gravy train pull out of the station without you… or, as it turns out, you could even be sued. At least in Italy.

Carscoop reports that Fiat is suing the Italian TV show AnnoZero for “defamatory” remarks about the Alfa Romeo MiTo Quadrifoglio, after the program asserted “the overall technical inferiority of the Alfa Romeo MiTo” in comparison to the MINI Cooper S and Citroen DS3 THP. The details of the case are sketchy, but you can find Fiat’s press release on the matter after the jump.

Last night, I was on the phone with one of my VC friends (that’s VC as in Venture Capital, not as in Vietcong, don’t get any ideas) and he decried the paucity of free cash: “From Joe Shmoe to billionaire investors, all are holding on to their money.” It can’t be all that bad if what Autoguide says is right, and if De Tomaso will be back from the dead. They say, there will be De Tomasos at the Geneva Autoshow.

Giorgetto Giugiaro sold out to the tedeschi at Volkswagen. Bertone is teaching budding Chinese car designers in brutally cold Changchun. And now, the last vestige of inspired Italian car design is on the auction block: Pininfarina . Actually, they had hired the Italian investment bank Banca Leonardo in August 2009, but they took their time. Now, the bidding is getting serious. And guess who wants to take Pininfarina home.

The rescue of Chrysler is making great strides. Sergio Marchionne today presented union officials an audacious plan. Powered by an investment of $1.3b, Chrysler and Fiat will build Alfa Romeos and Jeeps under one huge roof. The roof is in Mirafiori, Italy. Also known as the Fiat factory in Torino. And who will pay for all that? Fiat will pay 60 percent. Chrysler will pay 40 percent.

Luca di Montezemolo testing the New Stratos from New Stratos on Vimeo.

Ferrari Chariman Luca Di Montezomolo recently got a spin in Michael Stoschek’s homage to the Lancia Stratos, possibly one of the rarest treats in the car game just now. And even though it’s neither a Lancia nor a Stratos, anyone would be thrilled to drive one before they’re all locked into some climate-controlled bunker somewhere. But that’s not all Luca has to be thankful for: with a disastrous 2010 F1 season behind it, Ferrari is the center of speculation that Fiat will sell it off as it moves towards closer ties with Chrysler Group. Freedom from Fiat might mean an end to Lancia-branded one-offs based on Ferrari platforms, but given the depth of Fiat’s gamble on Chrysler, Ferrari would probably prefer to watch from a distance anyway. In fact, the only thing Luca probably isn’t thankful for this week is direct competition from the McLaren MP4-12C, which is launching at almost the exact same price as the 458 Italia.

Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, via its investment vehicle AMubadala Development Co, has sold back its 5 per cent stake in Ferrari to Fiat. It’s not that the sheiks were tired of Ferrari. Fiat wanted their shares back. Fiat had an option that gave it the right to buy back the stake that Mubadala had acquired in 2005 from Mediobanca, Italy’s largest investment bank for €114 million, domain-b reports.

Fiat paid €122m ($167m) to buy back the stock. Now their holdings climbed from 85 percent to 90 percent. Why would you want 90 percent in a small sports car maker if you already have 85 percent, and you need every penny of cash?