Fiat patriarch Agnelli dies in Turin aged 81

Giovanni Agnelli (81), head of Italy's troubled Fiat motor company, has died after months of illness.

Giovanni Agnelli (81), head of Italy's troubled Fiat motor company, has died after months of illness.

He had recently had treatment for prostate cancer in New York.

"He died in his house in Turin after months of illness," Fiat spokesman Mr Raffaelo Porro said. Fiat officials said the funeral would be strictly private.

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Agnelli maintained the trappings of his former lifestyle, with his yachts and luxury villas, even as he guided the auto giant's fortunes
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Grandson of an Italian senator, also Giovanni Agnelli, who founded the car-maker in 1899, Mr Agnelli took to heart his grandfather's advice that he should enjoy life to the full while he could.

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Italy's postwar gossip sheets rarely wanted for stories about the handsome, elegantly dressed heir to the Fiat empire whose interests, he told the press, amounted to "fast cars, pretty women and the gaming tables".

A narrow escape from death in a road accident in 1952 may have concentrated his mind, as the following year he married a Neapolitan princess and settled down to the task of becoming, in effect, the uncrowned king of the republic.

Heir apparent since the death of his father Edoardo in a seaplane accident in 1935, when he was 14, Mr Agnelli took over as Fiat's managing director in 1963 and as president three years later.

In passing from one Giovanni Agnelli to another, from grandfather to grandson in the purest monarchical tradition, Fiat had already become a pillar of the Italian economy, the success of its Fiat 500 and 600 models ensuring it the lion's share of the domestic market.

The company was a power to rival Rome, often compared with the medieval city-states - its sales alone accounting for 5 per cent of Italy's gross national product and turning out annual net profits of $2 billion.

Mr Agnelli maintained the trappings of his former lifestyle, with his yachts and luxury villas, even as he guided the auto giant's fortunes.

A cult of personality developed around "l'avocatto" (the lawyer) as he exploited what his biographer Alan Friedman called "a network of feudal power" that used methods "sometimes bordering on illegality" and which "could easily be thought of as another mafia".

Mr Agnelli's authority extended throughout an empire that included insurance, banking, department stores, media (including around a quarter of the Italian daily press) and the Juventus football club inherited from his father.

Although he remained honorary president of the company, Mr Agnelli increasingly took a back seat and had been a peripheral figure in the battle to save the loss-making Fiat Auto in recent months as the company forged a complex restructuring plan with its creditor banks.

AP