To his admirers, Giovanni "Gianni" Agnelli, who has died of prostate cancer at the age of 81, was the elder statesman and uncrowned king of Italian business.
The honorary chairman of the car giant Fiat since 1996, he served as chairman between 1966 and 1996 and wielded considerable influence on matters ranging from high finance to politics.
To his detractors, his courtly manners might have made him seem like a personable press officer at a mid-sized multinational company, had it not been for the birthright that left him in charge of Fiat.
Agnelli's career began uncertainly, continued successfully but ended disappointingly, with Fiat facing financial difficulties and his old age and ill-health seen as contributory factors.
At the beginning of the 1990s, around 50 per cent of the cars on Italian roads were Fiats, but that figure has now fallen to 33 per cent. Four years after Agnelli's resignation as chairman, 20 per cent of the car-making business was sold to US-based General Motors.
Agnelli's status in Italy derived from his family's ownership of the Turin car company founded by his grandfather, also called Giovanni, in 1899.
Born in Villar Perosa, near Turin, in 1921, he attended cavalry school and then qualified as a lawyer from Turin University in 1943, winning him the lifelong nickname l'Avvocato (the lawyer).
He served in a cavalry regiment, both on the Russian front and in Libya, during the second World War and then fought with the resistance. When the conflict ended, he was appointed vice-chairman of Fiat, occupying the post between 1945 and 1963 before becoming a managing director until 1966.
Agnelli wielded the kind of influence over the Italian government that big businessmen in other countries could only dream of. When he took a stand on an issue, the rest of the country was either for him or against him, but he had helped to set the agenda.
This influence stemmed from the importance of the Fiat group to the Italian economy, but Agnelli also cultivated a vast network of contacts reaching deep into bank and company boardrooms as well as Rome's corridors of power. Control of two leading dailies, Milan's Corriere della Sera and Turin's La Stampa, only extended his power.
As far as Agnelli was concerned, what was good for Fiat was also good for Italy. However, the ambiguity surrounding his company's relations with other influential figures, both political and industrial, marked his whole career. Where, to Agnelli, did Fiat end and Italy begin? The question never seemed to be satisfactorily answered.
Renowned for his wit, he could speak four languages fluently and, during the late 1940s and early 1950s, squired a succession of jet-setting beauties, including socialite Pamela Digby Churchill Harriman, Rita Hayworth and Anita Ekberg.He married Princess Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto in 1953.
After retiring from the company on becoming honorary chairman, Agnelli retained an active role in the holding companies through which the family controls the car-maker.
However, the downbeat finale to his career was almost inevitable. The political and economic system that had underpinned the position of both Fiat and the Agnelli family for much of the century was swept away, in part by the forces of globalisation and European integration.
His son predeceased him in 2000. His wife, his daughter Margerita and her children survive him.
Giovanni "Gianni" Agnelli: born 1921; died Janaury 24th, 2003