The Avvocato: The Story of the Man Who Invented the Fiat 500

“If we want everything to stay the same, everything must change.” So wrote Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa between the lines of The Leopard—a creed that became personal to the Avvocato. Avant-garde by nature, intuitive and self-assured—brazen just enough never to settle for second best—he was a playboy yet a gentleman, Italy’s last true regent. When the economic rebirth of the early ’50s ushered in an industrial renaissance, it was Gianni Agnelli who came to personify emancipation…or perhaps he claimed that mantle himself. Long before he became Fiat’s emblem, Italy’s most envied man spoke for the aspirations—and, often unwittingly, the transformations—of his era.

Sex, cars, sports: the perfect trinity. A football team, countless beautiful women…and the automobiles. He embodied everything the Italian Renaissance symbolized, leaving women speechless and earning men’s admiration. But who was this man whom nothing seemed impossible? He inherited the family fortune—Fiat—from his grandfather, a senator convinced that the future of automobiles lay in mass production. Following in Henry Ford’s footsteps, he set out to make the company a pillar of industry. Born in Turin, he grew up in his nanny’s care as the second of seven children—four sisters and three brothers. Undisciplined yet magnetic, he likely inherited his eccentric flair from his mother, Virginia—a scandalous figure for the time who kept a pet leopard—so different from his father, Edoardo, an aficionado of art, theater, and literature.

Few know that his father was barely forty when, aboard a seaplane bound for Forte dei Marmi, he was tragically decapitated by its propeller. Opportunity knocks in the most unpredictable ways: for Gianni, this calamity opened the door to the heady responsibility of leading the factory. Still very young, he was meticulously groomed to avoid mistakes. In 1938 he visited New York for the first time, astonished by America’s modernity—a love at first sight interrupted only by the call of war. Thus the Avvocato emerged: a blend of courage and resolve, as brilliant as any cavalry officer, yet donning the armor of rationality that would serve him all his life.

By 1945 the war was over. Virginia died in a car crash. The Fiat patriarch, himself a bombing victim, was accused of collaboration and forced out, shunned by the very company he built. The Agnelli star seemed destined to fade. Then Gianni stepped in with a last-minute maneuver to prevent the Allies from seizing Fiat’s core business in Piedmont. F for Fabbrica. I for Italiana. A for Automobili. T for Torino. No longer just a name, the acronym came alive; Fiat’s stylistic hallmark became its identity.

Per Agnelli’s own wishes, the presidency went to Vittorio Valletta—it wasn’t yet his time to rule. These were the days of the Côte d’Azur, of fascination… the irresistible Gianni, brazen as he declared, “Ladies should be treated like whores and vice versa.” Mad, when he dove from a helicopter into the Mediterranean. Fearless, as he raced down snowy slopes in his toboggan or hurtled along in his metallic-green Ferrari, utterly indifferent to traffic signs. This antihero even seduced Pamela Churchill, former daughter-in-law of the British prime minister—a romance tinged with business. Yet when it came to choosing a wife, he looked elsewhere: Marella Caracciolo, a longtime friend from the Neapolitan aristocracy, the perfect match for “the terrible boy.”

Edoardo. This was the name Gianni chose for his son—Edoardo, bearing the imprint of a father lost too soon, carrying all the pride a young man could hold. Yet Edoardo—and his sister, little Margherita—were often set aside in favor of high society. Sovereigns and heads of state all flocked to the Agnelli salon. His obsession with aesthetics, his vast culture—these were his language of power. “The inventor of vanity,” as those closest to him would say, claimed liberties no one else could: the way he knotted his tie, the watch above his cuff… and that effortless, fluid grace with which everything happened, elevating Marella and her husband to the very epicenter of high society.

To be continued…