The founding of Fiat

The investors and aristocrats who created giant of car industry

Lorenzo Delleani's painting of the founding of Fiat shows 
Bricherasio in the cream jacket, with Agnelli third from the right.

A group of nine Italian investors and aristocrats met at the Palazzo Cacherano di Bricherasio in Turin on this day in 1899 to found the automobile company Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino - Fiat, as it would become known.

The group were brought together by Emanuele Cacherano di Bricherasio, a wealthy nobleman and entrepreneur, and his fellow entrepreneur Cesare Goria Gatti, who were founder members of the Automobile Club of Italy. The two had already enjoyed some success in the fledgling world of car manufacture as part of the Ceirano GB & C partnership the previous year and saw the potential of producing vehicles on a much bigger scale.

In addition to Bricherasio and Gatti, the nine consisted of two other nobleman, Count Roberto Biscaretti di Ruffia and the Marquis Alfonso Ferrero de Gubernatis Ventimiglia, the banker and silk industrialist Michele Ceriana Mayneri, the lawyer Carlo Racca, the landowner Lodovico Scarfiotti, the stockbroker Luigi Damevino and the wax industrialist Michele Lanza.

Giovanni Agnelli, who became known as the founder of Fiat and whose descendants ensured kept the family at the heart of the business for 115 years, was not part of the original group but after Lanza dropped out was approached by Scarfiotti, his fellow landowner, to come on board.

After a number of meetings at the Caffè Burello on Corso Vittorio Emanuele in Turin, the group secured the financial support of the Banco di Sconto e Sete of Turin and met in Palazzo Bricherasio to sign the deeds drawn up by Dr Ernesto Torretta, patrimonial notary of the Royal House of Savoy.

The first Fiat off the production line at the Corso
Dante factory was the two-seater 3½ HP

The members paid a capital of 800,000 lire in return for 4,000 shares and entrusted the presidency to Ludovico Scarfiotti. 

The new company’s first outlay was to pay 30,000 lire for the Ceirano business, including all its expertise and workforce. Ceirano had already produced a small car known as the Welleyes - so called because English names had commercial appeal at the time - designed by the engineer Aristide Faccioli and handcrafted by Giovanni Battista Ceirano.

The first car built by Fiat  - the 3½ HP, a modest two-seater with a top speed of just 22mph (35kph) - was a copy of the Welleyes. Eight were built in total in 1899. The first factory was located on Corso Dante, in the southeast of the city, a short distance from the sweep of the Po river that gives the city a natural border. It opened in 1900, producing 24 cars, and remained the company’s production headquarters until the famous Lingotto plant went online in 1923.

Although Giovanni Agnelli quickly became the central figure of Fiat’s expansion and development, he was considered a junior member of the business at first, serving as secretary to the board.

But it soon became clear through his ideas that he had the strategic mindset required to build a profitable enterprise and his status was quickly elevated. By 1902, he was made managing director.

Fiat’s early years were not straightforward. There were various recapitalisations and changes in the composition of the share capital, but Agnelli steered the business through this period and by 1920, having become effectively the owner, he had risen to chairman.

By that time, Fiat had become the dominant player in Italy’s car industry with global expansion under way. Having become profitable by 1903, when it produced 135 cars, by 1906, that number had jumped to 1,149. It produced its first truck in 1903 and its first aircraft engine in 1908.  By 1910, as Italy’s largest car manufacturer, it entered the US market with a plant in New York. 

A rare picture of a young Gianni Agnelli (left) in
conversation with his grandfather, Giovanni

Giovanni Agnelli remained involved with the company until his death in 1945 at the age of 79, although for many years the man at the helm had been Vittorio Valletta, his trusted lieutenant, who had assumed control when Giovanni’s future was compromised by his close ties with the Fascist regime. 

Control would probably have passed to Giovanni’s only son, Edoardo, but he was killed in a plane crash in 1935. In the event, Valletta became president with Giovanni’s death and remained in that role until 1966, when at the age of 83 he finally handed over to Gianni Agnelli, the founder’s grandson.

The Agnelli family's direct operational control of Fiat ended in 2004, a year after the death of Gianni. The last Agnelli to lead Fiat as CEO was Umberto Agnelli, who passed away in May 2004, although the family remains involved, through John Elkann, Gianni Agnelli’s grandson.

Elkann took on a key leadership role and stayed in a prominent management position after the 2014 merger with Chrysler created Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Fiat as an independent family business ceased to be.

Fiat Chrysler evolved in 2021 into Stellantis, of which Elkann is chairman. Elkann is also CEO of Exor, the Agnelli family’s investment company, which owns major stakes in Stellantis as well as Ferrari, Juventus FC, and The Economist.

The company name still sits proudly above the
original factory in Corso Dante, which opened in 1900

Travel tip:

The original Fiat factory on Corso Dante in Turin still exists today and is open to the public as a museum, the Centro Storico Fiat, which has a large number of exhibits, including cars and aeroplanes, outlining the company’s history up to about 1970. The Fiat exhibits are part of the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile. Tickets cost €10 for adults, with opening times from 10am until 6pm. The factory opened in 1900 and was active for 22 years before the massive Lingotto plant came into use, and became associated with the Fiat Brevetti car.  The museum can be found at the junction of Corso Dante and Via Gabriele Chiabrera about 5km (3 miles) from the centre of Turin, near the southern end of the Parco del Valentino and a few streets from where the Ponte Isabella crosses the Po river.

The Palazzo Cacherano di Bicherasio, which
dates back to 1636, now houses a bank

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Cacherano di Bricherasio, located on Via Lagrange in central Turin, between Via Giovanni Giolitti and Via Cavour, was built in 1636 as a noble residence in the Contrada dei Conciai. It became the home of the now-extinct Cacherano di Bricherasio family in 1855, known for their military honours and cultural patronage. Count Emanuele Cacherano di Bricherasio, a key figure in Italy’s early automotive industry, hosted the founding meeting of Fiat in his study, making the palace a cradle of industrial history. His sister Sofia, a painter and patron, transformed the residence into a vibrant cultural salon, welcoming artists such as Lorenzo Delleani and Arturo Toscanini. After World War Two, the palace housed a school and then an exhibition venue for the Palazzo Bricherasio Foundation, following its restoration in 1994. Since 2010, it has housed Banca Patrimoni Sella & C, preserving its architectural elegance and historical significance while remaining partially open to the public for guided visits.

Also in this day:

138: Antoninus Pius becomes Roman Emperor following the death of Hadrian

1576: The murder of noblewoman Eleonora di Garzia di Toledo, wife of Don Pietro de’ Medici

1593: The death of painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo

1934: The birth of fashion designer Giorgio Armani

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Andrea Agnelli - Juventus chairman

Fourth member of famous dynasty to run Turin club

Andrea Agnelli has been chairman of Juventus
since succeeding John Elkann in 2010

The businessman Andrea Agnelli, who since 2010 has been chairman of Italy’s leading football club, Juventus, was born on this day in 1975 in Turin.

He is the fourth Agnelli to take the helm of the famous club since 1923, when his grandfather, Edoardo, took over as president and presided over the club’s run of five consecutive Serie A titles in the 1930s.

Andrea’s father, Umberto, and his uncle, the flamboyant entrepreneur Gianni Agnelli, also had spells running the club, which has been controlled by the Agnelli family for 88 years, with the exception of a four-year period between 1943 and 1947. The family still owns 64% of the club.

As well as being chief operating officer of Fiat, which was founded by Andrea’s great-grandfather, Giovanni, Umberto was a Senator of the Italian Republic.  On his mother’s side, Andrea has noble blood.

Donna Allegra Caracciolo di Castagneto is the first cousin of Marella Agnelli - Gianni’s widow - who was born Donna Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto and is the daughter of Filippo Caracciolo, 8th Prince di Castagneto, 3rd Duke di Melito, and a hereditary Patrician of Naples.

A young Andrea Agnelli pictured at the 1996 Champions
League final - the last Juventus won - with his uncle, Gianni

Andrea had a private education St Clare's, an independent college in Oxford, England, and at Bocconi University in Milan.  After university, Agnelli entered the business world, working for companies in England and France that included Iveco and Auchan Hypermarché. He also spent several years in Switzerland.

He was appointed chairman of the board of directors of Juventus by his first cousin, John Elkann, in 2010, after Elkann had come under criticism from Juventus fans for the club's poor results during the 2009–10 season.

Many Juventus fans welcomed Andrea’s arrival because of the family's historic association with the club. He is credited with turning round the club’s fortunes at a time when the financial recession and the aftermath of the infamous Calciopoli scandal were making progress difficult.

Emma Winter, the English artist
Agnelli married in 2005

He stabilised the club’s finances and, after initially appointing Sampdoria duo Giuseppe Marotta as director of sport and Luigi Delneri as coach, pulled off a masterstroke in May 20100 by hiring former captain and fan favourite Antonio Conte as new manager.

Conte, who had coached Bari to the Serie B title in 2008-09, steered Juve in his first season to their first scudetto since they were stripped of two titles in the mid-2000s as a result of the Calciopoli rulings.

Since then, with Agnelli appointing the former AC Milan coach Massimiliano Allegri to replace Chelsea-bound Conte in 2014 in a seamless change at the top, Juventus have won a record seven Serie A titles in a row, as well as four Coppa Italia titles in a row since 2014–15.

Juventus are well on course for an eighth consecutive title, having already built a lead of eight points over Napoli in the Serie A table, but Agnelli and the club more than anything crave success in the Champions League, which they have not won since 1996, when they defeated Ajax on penalties in the final in Rome.

In the 22 seasons subsequent to that one, they have been runners-up five times, twice since Andrea became chairman, in 2015 and 2017, when they were beaten respectively by the Spanish giants Barcelona and Real Madrid.

Andrea Agnelli would like to see the Champions League
established as the main competition for Europe's biggest clubs

Despite falling revenues - the club recorded an operating loss of €19 million (£17 million) in 2017-18 - Andrea authorised the signing of Real’s Cristiano Ronaldo in July this year for a fee of €100 million (£88.5 million), beating the previous record fee paid by an Italian club that was set by Juventus in 2016 when they signed Gonzalo Higuaín from Napoli for €90 million (£75.3 million).

The Ronaldo signing will eventually cost Juventus €340 million (£301 million) with the player’s salary taken into account, yet Agnelli insisted that the outlay “made sense on and off the pitch”, in a reference to the commercial revenue the Portugal star was likely to generate for the club through merchandising, and to his potential for helping Juventus achieve Agnelli’s target of winning the Champions League.

As chairman of the powerful European Club Association, a position he has held since 2017, Andrea is keen to see the Champions League overtake domestic competition as the principal focus for Europe’s top clubs, proposing an increase in the size of the Champions League and a corresponding reduction in the number of domestic fixtures.

Edoardo Agnelli, grandfather of
Andrea, ran Juventus in the 1930s

This has been driven in part by the inequality that now exists between the domestic leagues in European countries, mainly because of the huge variations in television revenue, particular compared with the Premier League in England. Juventus, despite their dominant position in Italian football, are only the 10th wealthiest club in Europe in terms of revenue.

Andrea Agnelli is married to Emma Winter, a English-born artist, designer and art director, whose clients have included United Visual Artists, Universal, Sony, Polydor, Ted Baker, Adidas, Dove, Peugeot and Panasonic.

They were married in 2005 at the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Villar Perosa in Piedmont, with the reception taking place at the nearby Villa Agnelli, the family estate which is now the home of Marella Agnelli. The couple have two children, 13-year-old Baya Agnelli and six-year-old Giacomo Dai Agnelli.

UPDATE: Agnelli resigned as chairman and president of Juventus in November 2022 following investigations into financial irregularities at the club. He received a two-year ban from football over alleged false accounting and was suspended for a further 16 months from July 2023 when he was found guilty of fraud relating to player salary cuts during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Villa Agnelli, country home of the Agnelli family
at Villar Perosa in Piedmont in 1811

Travel tip:

Villar Perosa, where Giovanni Agnelli was born, is a small town about 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Turin.  The Villa Agnelli, the family's country house and estate there, consisting of a 45-room stuccoed rococo villa with grounds and a commanding views of the Alps, has been in the the Agnelli family since 1811. As well as Russell Page, the English landscape gardener, the Agnellis hired renowned architect Gae Aulenti to create the timbered pool house. The estate also contains a family chapel, where members of the Agnelli clan are buried.

Search TripAdvisor for Villar Perosa hotels

Juventus play their home matches at the Juventus Stadium,
which holds 41,000 people, in the Vallette district of Turin

Travel tip:

Juventus is one of the two major football clubs in Turin, the other being Torino.  Although Juventus now play at a stadium on the northern perimeter of the city in the Vallette district, the club's roots are in the city centre.  Their original ground was in what is now known as the Parco Cavalieri di Vittorio Veneto, a large green space between Corso IV Novembre and Corso Galileo Ferraris just south of the city centre, which in the late 19th century was Piazza d'Armi, an army parade ground.  Nearby is the Stadio Olimpico, now the home of Torino, which was formerly called Stadio Comunale, where the two clubs cohabited until 1990. Juventus now play at the Juventus Stadium, an ultra-modern ground with a 41,000 capacity that has been their home since 2011, and which also houses the Juventus museum.


More reading:

How Gianni Agnelli became more powerful than politicians

Marella Agnelli, the noblewoman who married into a business dynasty

Massimiliano Allegri, the coach who keeps the trophies coming at Juventus

Also on this day:

1478: The birth of Baldassare Castiglione, the author of the Italian classic, The Book of the Courtier

1586: The birth of astronomer Niccolò Zucchi

1794: The birth of 19th century opera star Luigi Lablache


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Giovanni Agnelli – entrepreneur

Founder of Fiat had keen eye for a good investment

Giovanni Agnelli, the businessman who founded the Fiat car manufacturing company, died on this day in 1945 in Turin.

A monument to Giovanni Agnelli in
his home town of Villar Perosa

As soon as Agnelli heard about the idea of a ‘horseless carriage’, he recognised it as a business opportunity and in 1898 met up with an inventor looking for investors for his project.

In 1899 he became part of a group who founded the Fabbrica Italiana di Automobili Torino. Within a year he had become managing director of the company and by 1903 the business was making a small profit.

Giovanni had been born in Villar Perosa, a small town near Pinerolo in Piemonte, in 1866.

He embarked on a military career after finishing his studies but returned to his home town to follow in his father’s footsteps and become Mayor.

Fiat continued to grow and went public before the start of the First World War. After the war the first Fiat car dealership was established in the United States and the company continued to expand internationally.

Although Giovanni Agnelli had many other business interests he remained actively involved with Fiat until his death on 16 December 1945 at the age of 79.

Giovanni’s son Edoardo had become a principal shareholder in Fiat but unexpectedly died in 1935 in an accident involving a sea plane, ten years before his father.

But Edoardo’s son Gianni was the head of Fiat from 1966 until his death in 2003 and made the company the most important in Italy and one of the top European car builders.

Travel tip:

Villar Perosa, where Giovanni Agnelli was born, is a small town about 40 km southwest of Turin. Members of the Agnelli family have lived in a country house there since 1811.

Turin, pictured from Monte dei Cappuccini

Travel tip:

Turin is known as the ‘royal’ capital of Italy as it has many palaces and residences built by members of the House of Savoy, the family the Kings of the new united Italy came from. Turin lies in the centre of the region of Piemonte and is now a major industrial and cultural city. 

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