Marchionne's Last Lap

摘要

On a gray Tuesday morning, Sergio Marchionne takes one of his half-dozen Ferraris-a black Enzo-for a spin around Fiat's high-speed test track near the village of Balocco, 40 miles east of Turin, Italy. "When you're pissed off, there's nothing better than this," Marchionne, the chief executive officer of Fiat and Chrysler Group, says as he pushes the car from a comfortable 120 mph to something over 200. Marchionne will be all smiles when he and Fiat Chairman John Elkann visit the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 13 to mark the debut of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), the company he's cobbled together from Italy's venerable Fiat and American icon Chrysler. But he's still got plenty to be angry about. Fiat's Italian shares have fallen more than 20 percent since April. A nascent recovery in Europe's car market-which still accounts for a quarter of the combined company's deliveries-is flagging after sales contracted to a two-decade low in 2013. And the much ballyhooed return of Fiat's Alfa Romeo brand to the U.S. will be delayed until at least 2016, other than a few hundred of a two-seater introduced this year.