The Lawyer: The Man Who Invented the 500 - Part 3

The very myth of industrialization, of the automobile, of progress—what Fiat stood for in the postwar era—now seems to be creaking under the weight of the dramatic events that define the 1970s…

Turin and all of Piedmont, but also Bologna, Florence, Naples, Milan, Venice, Genoa, Pisa… With 33% of the vote, the Communist Party swallows everything in its path. Nearly two million card-carrying members represent a shock nobody in Italy saw coming. In the factories, strikes, sit-ins, and acts of sabotage spiral one after another. Caught in the middle of the Cold War, Italy comes to be seen as NATO’s weak link. “If you can’t beat them, make them your friend,” goes the old proverb. Wise—and savvy—the Lawyer lives by it

On the streets, the chant is always the same: “Ladri!”—thieves. The idea that the powerful are profiting from the suffering of a starving people is stoked by a spate of attacks tinged unmistakably with revolutionary fervor. Dozens of Fiat executives are shot in the legs. With the rise of the Red Brigades, terrorism’s doors swing wide open.

Managers, politicians, journalists—no one is spared. Before long, the stakes are raised from shoot-outs to kidnappings and murders. On September 21, 1979, Carlo Ghiglieno, Fiat’s Logistics Director, is executed because his role is deemed crucial. Then comes “the Kidnapping”: the abduction of Aldo Moro. His plan, as President of the Christian Democrats, to disarm the country and bring the Reds into the orbit of power proves hopeless.

Convinced they intend to kill him, he abandons his 145-hectare estate at Villar Perosa—but never changes who he is. He never leaves the factory, never quits Turin. Each morning he drives to work in his souped-up Fiat with a Ferrari engine, taking a wicked pleasure in shaking off his escort. He switches routes every day but always stays near the city—he wants people to see him as a constant. It’s a risk he knows full well, and one he’s willing to take.

Faced with yet another walkout, Fiat’s middle managers organize a rally. Forty thousand people march, demanding the right to go back to work. That moment marks a turning point, ushering straight into the 1980s. “La Milano da bere” becomes the symbol of an emancipated, forward-looking nation—and Fiat its glittering flagship.

“A Sicilian who makes things happen,” everyone says of him. “How? No one knows.” Behind the scenes it’s still Enrico Cuccia, the “Great Manipulator,” who—just as Gianni is ready to hand the reins to his brother Umberto—reasserts his power. The Mediobanca-Romiti axis squashes the old dynastic claims. After all, the man who handles the dirty work knows how to clean up the mess and keep Gianni’s image spotless.

What happens when a young man of gentle, brilliant, sensitive spirit is predestined to occupy a role that doesn’t suit him? When he’s trapped in a life that sweeps over him in a fog of silence and unspoken expectations? Edoardo—the intellectual, like his grandfather—too weighed down to project boldness, too overlooked to avoid vanishing completely. So it falls to Giovannino, Umberto’s son, to become the heir apparent. He seems the right choice—until, at thirty-two, a fast-growing tumor claims him in months. Then who? John Elkann, the rising star, the favored grandson, already on the board at twenty-one. Who else but him?

A leap into the void: a hundred meters high to brush infinity, to prove that maybe, just maybe, courage did exist. Edoardo, forty-six, throws himself from a bridge just three days after another bitter argument with his father. The man who could save the world has failed—he couldn’t save his own flesh and blood. Gianni collapses under the heaviest defeat of his life. The Giant’s legs are broken. The Immortal, dethroned from Olympus, crashes to earth. Yet in the chill of January 26, 2003, at the Lawyer’s funeral, everyone comes. Half a million people climb atop the Lingotto to remember, to give thanks… for that helicopter that, hovering over the city, always sounded like a father’s reassuring promise to care for his children.