THE very best people in business, I’ve noticed, tend to belie their age. And sure enough, when Fiat CEO Olivier François (above), pointed out to me during a recent Zoom chat (me in a cluttered study in Berkshire, him in a swish-looking kitchen in Milan) that he’s only just turned 60 years of age, I had to raise an eyebrow.
Olivier is fizzing right now, and with good reason: Fiat’s all-electric 500 has been well received and the company is just about to tap into the huge potential for parts and platform-sharing with its Stellantis group stablemates: Peugeot, Citroen, Vauxhall/Opel and DS. Development costs for new models, he freely admits, can be cut by up to three quarters, in some cases.
There was a key point in our conversation, in…
