They have been called the first family of Italy.
La famiglia. The family. They could also be called the rulers, the elitists and the monopolists.
Italy became a republic in 1948 but, the truth is, the Agnellis might as well have been the monarchy.
If the Fiat car company is a national symbol for Italy -- born of Fiat's creation of small, affordable cars -- then the Agnellis also deserve a space on the mantle.
From the snow-capped mountains north of Udine, to the warm sea near Sicily, they have been part of the Italian economic and social fabric, woven and tucked into every sector of life.
Don't think they wield power and influence? The Fiat Group accounts for a significant portion of Italy's national product, industrial workforce and industrial investments in research.
The family's net worth is estimated at more that US $2.3 billion. It was, and still is, an empire in the true Roman sense of the word, built by one famiglia.
The history of Fiat actually begins with Giovanni Agnelli, the grandfather of the more infamous Gianni Agnelli. On July 11, 1899 at Palazzo Bricherasio, Giovanni signed a contract with Emanuele Bricherasio di Cacherano, a nobleman from Turin who was looking for investors and partners in a company he was going to call "Societ Anonima Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino," or Fiat.
The first factory was opened in 1900 in Corso Dante, employing nearly 200 workers.
Agnelli stood out in the group of investors and won recognition for his determination and strategic vision. By 1902 he was named the company's managing director.
Giovanni, an ex-cavalry officer, thought of Fiat as little more than an aristocratic hobby. With an investment of $400 in capital in 1899, Agnelli began amassing Fiat's fortune by meshing Detroit's production principles and some Italian style. He made the trek to the United States to see Henry Ford's production process, bringing those Ford techniques back to Turin and using them to pioneer his company. He was known to often ask himself the simple question, "What would Ford do?"
Back in Italy, what Agnelli did was build a family dynasty, creating jobs for generations of Italian families by producing economical transportation. Giovanni molded Fiat into an empire Italian dictator Benito Mussolini would later call "an untouchable and sacred state institution on par with royalty, the church (and) a regime."
Although they portioned out daily control to many other managers, the Agnellis were always the group guiding the ship.
Agnelli would die in 1945 but Fiat's founder would pass ownership to his grandson, Giovanni -- or Gianni, as he was known -- who would see the automaker into the next century and help it forge a permanent place in the Italian landscape through some innovative deals.
After a period of temporary rule by Vittorio Valletta, during which Gianni was learning how his family's company worked, he took over Fiat in 1966 and made it the most important company in Italy.
In a short time, Fiat would become the principle vehicle, dominating market share in its own country as well as others. He opened factories throughout the world and secured international alliances which marked a new industrial mentality. Fiat even agreed to help the former Soviet Union build cars, creating the Lada from Fiat technology.
"For us that represented a zero-profit operation," Gianni Agnelli once told Automotive News Europe. "But this plan was very successful in establishing Fiat as one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world."
Led by the ambitious younger Gianni Agnelli, Fiat would eventually sink its teeth into everything -- from aerospace to telecommunications to insurance, newspapers, magazines and TV.
But changes would come.
With labour troubles in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as steadily increasing competition by the late 1980s, Fiat saw its share of the Italian auto market fall to 39 per cent from 60. Even in Western Europe, Fiat's share barely made double digits.
By the late-1990s, in an effort to strengthen itself and position Fiat for the future, the automaker formed a US $2.4-billion alliance with General Motors.
After the agreement, Fiat became the second largest shareholder in GM.
The Fiat dynasty also suffered a major blow in 1997 when cancer claimed the life of a 33-year-old grandnephew of Gianni Agnelli, the one person who was set to be the heir apparent.
But even in debt, even in financial turmoil and even in death, Fiat wasn't done. A few years before his death at age 81, Gianni Agnelli, an honorary chairman of Fiat, showed no sign of stopping. He orchestrated the US $4.3-billion acquisition of 52 per cent of Montedison, the second-biggest player in Italy's deregulated energy market, and went public with Juventus, his popular soccer team.
His death in 2003 was met by an outpouring of national grief. He had been in the Fiat power structure for 30 years, building it into a global powerhouse, before retiring in 1996.
When he died, the torch was passed to Umberto Agnelli, Gianni's younger brother, who took over control of the Agnelli family holding company, which then controlled Fiat with a stake of 30 per cent.
A century later, Fiat rolls on; a company with a small start but one driving force: La famiglia.
Steven Reive is a feature writer with Wheelbase Communications. You can drop him a note on the Web at www.wheelbase.ws/mailbag.html. Wheelbase Communications supplies automotive news and features to newspapers across North America.
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