At the age of 21, most young men and women struggle to map out a career for themselves. Not so for 21-year-old John Philip Elkann who has just been co-opted onto the board of automobile giant, Fiat, the flagship of Italian industry.
For him beckons a future of awesome responsibility and remarkable opportunity as he begins a complex apprenticeship in the "family business".
John Philip Elkann, you see, is the grandson of Fiat honorary president, Gianni Agnelli, the man who as head of Fiat from 1966 to 1996 steered the company through the vicissitudes of potential bankruptcy, trade union unrest and worldwide recession to its present dominant position in Italian, European and worldwide car markets.
Fiat has always seemed to be a quintessentially Italian family company. Since the July day in 1899 when the ex-cavalry officer, Giovanni Agnelli, founded the Fabbrica Italiana di Automobili Torino (Fiat was thus founded four years before a certain Henry Ford got down to business in Dearborn, Michigan), the Agnelli family has maintained tight control and a majority shareholding in what continues to be Italy's largest private sector company.
When "L'Avvocato" (The Lawyer), as 76year-old Gianni Agnelli is known throughout Italy, finally passed over the reins of power in June of 1996, he was succeeded by current chief executive, Cesare Romiti. That appointment was seen by many as a move which ensured both continuity and status quo at Fiat since Mr Romiti had worked as Gianni Agnelli's right-hand man for the previous 20 years.
Cesare Romiti, however, will be 75 this year and could, in theory, retire from the post of chief executive. For a long time, it had been suggested that Gianni Agnelli's nephew, Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, would prove the logical heir to the Agnelli throne.
That plan, however, went tragically and prematurely wrong just before Christmas when the 33-year-old, American-educated Giovanni Alberto died from cancer. Chairman of the Piaggio motor-scooter company, recently married to the American Avery Howe with whom he had a baby girl last September, Giovanni Alberto or "Giovannino" (to distinguish him from his illustrious uncle) had seemed perfect "officer material" to head the family empire.
The successful track record he had established at Piaggio allied to his belief in an open marketplace made Giovannino a symbol for a new, younger Italian ruling class which craves radical economic and political change. Italy is still marked by a pyramidal or feudal business structure, not much given to openness or antitrust principles and in which a handful of powerful families still account for more than half the value of the entire Milan stock exchange.
The Agnelli family's reaction to the tragic loss of Giovannino was typical both for the reserved, elegant and private way in which the young Agnelli was mourned and buried and for the determined way in which a "business-as-usual" signal was almost immediately launched.
For within a week of Giovannino's death, Gianni Agnelli announced that John Elkann would be co-opted onto the Fiat board, adding: "John's arrival on the board is the most significant way in which the Agnelli family can express its continuing affinities with Fiat . . . I myself was only 22 when I took my place on the board in 1943. John is very young but he has already shown himself to be very capable and very sound."
The young pretender arrives in the Fiat control tower at a good moment. Fiat Auto (this includes Fiat, Ferrari, Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Innocenti) had a spectacularly successful 1997 in which it sold approximately two million cars worldwide.
Fiat turnover in 1997 was £36 billion, returning pre-tax profits of £1.6 billion, more than double the 1996 profit of £720 million (excluding a special gain from the 1996 public offering of a 31 per cent shareholding in New Holland NV on the New York stock exchange).
Furthermore, Fiat's so-called sub-compact car, the Punto, this year achieved an historic milestone when it overtook the Volkswagen Golf as the biggest seller in Europe with 550,000 sales in the first 10 months of 1997. Fiat continues to sell nearly half the cars sold in Italy, while Italy's five top sellers this year (Fiat Punto, Fiat Bravo or Brava, Lancia Y, Fiat Panda and Fiat 500) are all members of the family.
On the world stage, Fiat has big plans for its so-called "world cars", the Palio and the Siena, which in 1997 registered 400,000 sales approximately and which, it is hoped, will contribute to projected Fiat sales of more than three million cars worldwide in 1998.
On paper, the young Mr Elkann has just the pedigree to one day head a business empire which these days includes trucks, tractors, buses, trains, machinery, newspapers, supermarkets, tour companies and much else besides.
Born in the US, John Elkann went to primary school in the States, to secondary school in France and is currently studying at the Politechnico in Turin.
Like many members of the Agnelli family, he is a sound linguist, speaking excellent English, French and Portuguese as well as Italian. The son of Gianni Agnelli's daughter, Margherita (42), and of Franco-American writer Alain Elkann, young John recently followed in a well-established family tradition and worked on the shop-floor of far flung sections of the Fiat empire, stretching from the Magneti Marelli plant in Birmingham to the Fiat Poland factory where the Fiat 500 is produced.
Recently, young Mr Elkann has also been following the tradition laid down by the paternal side of his family, namely journalism. As editor of a university magazine, La Scheggia (The Splinter), he has interviewed people such as Pirelli boss, Marco Tronchetti Provera, and Ferrari Formula One team chief, Luca di Montezemolo.
In days maybe not so far off, John Philip Elkann is sure to be the one answering and not asking the questions.
