Fiat fans attending the annual convention of the Club Fiat-Lancia Unlimited were given a special surprise when the head of Fiat North America arrived at their closing dinner and made them an exclusive offer. These long-time enthusiasts of the Fiat brand and vehicles, some for almost 27 years, were given the first opportunity to place reservations and select their vehicle build number for the unique Fiat Cinquecento ‘Prima Edizione’ (First Edition) model. A total of 500 of these collector-edition Fiat 500 models will be sold in the United States.

“The Fiat Cinquecento Prima Edizione was developed especially with the Fiat fans in mind,” said Laura Soave, Head of Fiat North America, who personally presented the opportunity to the Fiat aficionados. “For over a quarter of a century, the members of this Club have kept the spirit of the Fiat and Lancia brands alive in North America through their unique and passionate support for true Italian design. We really value their loyalty, and the Prima Edizione is our gift of appreciation to these fans on behalf of Fiat North America.”

The Fiat 500 Prima Edizione will be exclusively available in three colors: Bianco (White), Rosso (Red) and Grigio (Gray). These limited-edition Fiat 500 models will be equipped with a manual transmission and will feature an exclusive Prima Edizione badge. Each of the 500 Prima Edizione vehicles will feature a sequential VIN and badge according to production order.

The modern generation of the Fiat 500 will be introduced in North America at the end of 2010 and will offer customers uncompromising safety, fuel efficiency from its 1.4-liter MultiAir™ four-cylinder engine, individualization options, quality and advanced technology, all wrapped in iconic Italian style. The Fiat MultiAir technology was recognized as the “single most innovative engine technology” of the year by the International Engine of the Year Awards panel.

Fiat North America will also offer other Fiat fans the opportunity to reserve their Prima Edizione model, up to a limit of 500, via a special website that will be made available at a later date through www.ciaofiat.com.

Fiat Mobile Experience

The Fiat Cinquecento ‘Prima Edizione’ announcement was made during the national annual convention organized by Club Fiat-Lancia Unlimited, North America’s largest enthusiast club for owners of Fiat Group Automobile vehicles. This year, the convention – commonly known as the “Fiat Freakout” – was held in Asheville, NC.

Fiat North America was the title sponsor of the annual convention, which featured displays of more than 100 well-preserved Fiat, Lancia and Alfa Romeo vehicles.

During the event, Fiat North America debuted the ‘Fiat Mobile Experience’ – a unique display that hosts both a café station and a Fiat brand merchandise store.

Fiat fans attending the convention were able to enjoy complimentary gelato, espresso and cappuccino served by baristas. Visitors were also able to browse through and purchase various Fiat-branded merchandise items in a unique store area, finished in Fiat red and white colors and staffed by Fiat merchandizing specialists.

The Fiat Mobile Experience display is constructed from a repurposed auto-shipping container and will be seen at other future Fiat shows and exhibitions in North America.

Chrysler Group LLC has begun the dealer selection process for the reintroduction of the Fiat brand in the United States.

The Fiat brand in the U.S. will feature the New Fiat 500, which recently celebrated the 53rd anniversary of its introduction in Europe. Dealers will begin selling the iconic Fiat 500 late this year and the Fiat 500 Cabrio in 2011.

Chrysler Group expects to select dealers in about 125 markets identified for growth potential in the small-car segment. Fiat dealers will be located in approximately 41 states.

“The Fiat dealer network will be appropriately sized to serve the market opportunity,” said Peter Grady, Vice President of Network Development and Fleet, Chrysler Group LLC. “Our vision is to establish a dealer network that will reflect and enhance the brand’s reputation for innovation and fun, and will offer a unique, personalized customer experience.”

Chrysler Group will send Dealer Application Guides to dealers in the identified markets containing specific Fiat dealer requirements and instructions on submitting a proposal. The guide presents details on facility, sales strategy, accessory sales, service and parts departments, training curriculum and financial requirements.

Dealers must demonstrate how they will market, sell and service Fiat vehicles with a new customer service model. Basic guidelines include.

• Location – The majority of dealerships will be located in the identified markets
• Eligible Dealers – Proposals from Chrysler Group’s best performing dealers will have preference in the identified markets
• Dealer Performance – Chrysler Group will evaluate interested dealers on volume performance, minimum sales responsibility accomplishment, capitalization and overall Dealer Standards score. In addition, the company will individually evaluate the proposed facility and customer handling metrics.
• Fiat Facility – A completely separate facility will be required to represent the Fiat brand.
• Fiat Team – A separate Fiat team will be required to sell and service the Fiat brand.
• Fiat Standards – Fiat standards will be unique from existing Chrysler Group Dealer Standards.
• Financial – Dealer candidates will have to show that they have the financial resources necessary to support the introduction of the Fiat brand.

Dealers in the target markets will be invited to attend a meeting in Chrysler Group World Headquarters in Auburn Hills, Mich. Chrysler Group plans to officially announce its U.S. Fiat dealer network locations in September.

Fiat on Wednesday kept its options open on the future of a car plant in southern Italy after a third of the workforce voted against conditions tied to a critical investment plan.

In a statement, Fiat did not reveal whether it would shut down or invest heavily in the Pomigliano d'Arco plant in the impoverished region around the southern town of Naples after the vote on Tuesday.

Fiat said it was "impossible" to reach an agreement with all unions, adding that it would "work with the unions that have taken the responsibility for the agreement... to carry out future projects."

Under the plan, Fiat would move production of its best selling Panda model from Poland -- where labour costs are low -- to Pomigliano on condition that workers accept longer hours and shorter breaks.

The company, which acquired a 20-percent stake in Chrysler last year with the aim of taking it over, is prepared to invest 700 million euros (850 million dollars) to rejuvenate Pomigliano.

"No one else would bring back production from abroad" to Italy, Fiat boss Sergio Marchionne said earlier this month.

Pundits and politicians have lauded Fiat's intention to de-localize production to -- and not from -- Italy, but critics say the conditions workers would have to agree to are too harsh.

On Tuesday, 62.2 percent of the workers voted for and 36.7 percent against the proposed conditions.

"This is the worst result for Fiat," Gianluca Spina, head of the business school at Milan's polytechnic, told AFP.

"The weak support for the plan does not give it enough guarantees to move the production to Pomigliano. The risk of tensions -- with strikes and absenteeism -- remains too high and that would put in danger the plant's competitiveness."

Fiat wants to arrange shifts to enable the plant to operate 24 hours a day, six days a week in order for it to build 270,000 cars a year compared with just 35,000 vehicles in 2009 -- a year marked by several periods of temporary layoffs owing to the global economic downturn.

Marchionne has said the plant could be shut down as soon as next year should the plan fall through.

The Panda, an inexpensive hatchback is currently produced in the southern Polish plant of Tychy, near the border with the Czech Republic.

On June 15, the plan was approved by all of the unions except FIOM-CGIL, which maintains that the scheme infringes on workers' rights, giving Fiat the power to sanction and eventually fire workers over "abnormal" absences from the workplace.

FIOM maintains the rule compromises workers' right to strike.

Marchionne, who is also the head of Chrysler, has often complained about having to deal with more than one Italian union.

"We need to talk with one interlocutor -- like in the US -- not twelve," he said last week.

Fiat is Italy's biggest private employer with a national workforce of some 80,000 people

Italy's Fiat and Russian auto maker Sollers will invest 2.4 billion euros (3.3 billion dollars) in a new joint venture to produce cars in Russia, the Russian government said Wednesday.

"With this project a second major player is created on the Russian passenger car market," after Russia's largest carmaker Avtovaz, the government said in a statement.

The deal to produce up to 500,000 cars per year is to be inked on Thursday, when Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visits Sollers's plant in Naberezhnye Chelny, where Fiat Albea and Doblo models are already built.

Fiat chief executive Sergio Marchionne is also set to attend the event in the southwestern Russian republic of Tartastan.

The joint venture represents the first major foreign capital in the Russian car market since the global financial crisis triggered a collapse in demand.

Russia had once promised to have the world's fastest growing auto sector, but car sales dropped by 49 percent last year compared to 2008.

Citing an official and a banking source, daily Kommersant said Tuesday that the Naberezhnye Chelny factory would now start producing the Fiat Linea and stop making jeeps for troubled South Korean car maker SsongYang.

Fiat and Sollers have been partners since 2005, but the Italian auto giant has a long history of business in Russia.

The sprawling Avtovaz factory in Tolyatti was designed by Fiat in 1970s and its iconic cars such as the Lada and the Niva, which once dominated the Soviet auto industry, were modeled after the Italian carmaker's 1960s models.

Admiration for Sergio Marchionne, the dynamic boss of Italian automaker Fiat, is giving way to grumbling as unions and the government question some of his more aggressive decisions.

The Canadian-Italian credited with rescuing the Italian icon from the brink of bankruptcy in 2005 has come under fire recently for his "irreversible" decision to shut down Fiat's Termini Imerese factory in Sicily.

As workers called a four-hour strike over that decision next Wednesday, Fiat announced Tuesday it will halt production at all Italian plants for two weeks from February 22 because of a fall-off in orders.

Guglielmo Epifani, secretary general of Italy's largest labor union CGIL, said the move, which will temporarily lay off some 30,000 workers, threw "fuel on the fire."

Other unions say the temporary layoff is aimed at pressuring the government to extend a "cash-for-clunkers" scheme.

On Monday, Fiat said it could return to profit this year, after a heavy loss in 2009, only if European governments continued such incentives allowing consumers to trade in petrol-guzzling cars for more fuel-efficient models.

Economic Development Minister Claudio Scajola said the decision by Italy's biggest private employer "doesn't seem appropriate," also expressing surprise at not having been informed of the move.

The Italian Catholic Church also weighed in, asking that the "voices of families losing jobs be heard."

Marchionne dismissed the criticism, saying: "We are the biggest investor in Italy but we are not the government."

Marchionne's positions are a novelty in Italy, where Fiat was run for decades by the dynastic Agnelli family -- "Italy's Kennedys" -- and was traditionally close to the government.

Giuseppe Berta, professor at Bocconi University in Milan and an expert on Fiat's industrial history, said Marchionne "wants to distance himself as much as possible" from Italy's political and social debate.

"It's a break with history," Berta told AFP.

Marchionne may be expressing his Canadian side but he is also demonstrating to the United States -- after acquiring a 20 percent stake in the ailing US giant Chrysler last year -- "that he is capable of shutting down a factory in Italy," Berta said.

The Fiat boss, who also became Chrysler's CEO, failed to calm the unions' ire with assurances that he would move the Fiat Panda production line from Poland to Pomigliano, in southern Italy.

Italians, whose national pride was stoked by the Chrysler deal, are now wrestling with the "uneasiness, widespread and legitimate, that he (Marchionne) might pay less attention to Fiat," Scajola said.

Little known in 2004 when he took the helm of a Fiat then on the verge of collapse, Marchionne quickly won over the media, unions and politicians by turning the company around without massive job cuts.

Italian automaker Fiat on Tuesday called a two-week production halt in Italy from February 22, temporarily laying off some 30,000 workers because of a fall-off in orders.

"We announced today that all factories will stop from February 22 to March 7," a Fiat spokesman told AFP.

"The (temporary) layoff announced today should be seen in relation to this month's orders trend," Fiat said in a statement.

"After a positive period at the end of 2009, orders taken in Italy in January have shrunk drastically to a level that is even lower than that recorded in January last year when the market was in serious crisis," it said.

"Anticipating that this negative trend will continue, it is necessary to adjust production levels to demand."

The announcement came the day after Fiat reported a larger-than-expected net loss for 2009 but forecast a return to profit this year as long as European governments continued incentives to buy eco-friendly vehicles.

The automaker suffered a net loss of 848 million euros (1.2 billion dollars) in 2009 compared with a profit of 1.72 billion euros the previous year.

Analysts had predicted a net loss of some 320 million euros, according to a consensus compiled by Dow Jones Newswires.

The annual loss was the first for the Italian icon since its return to profit in 2005 under its dynamic new boss Sergio Marchionne, credited with turning the company around after four straight years in the red.

Schemes such as "cash-for-clunkers" bonuses for trading in petrol-guzzling cars for more fuel-efficient models will help Fiat achieve sales of between 52 billion and 53 billion euros, it said.

Without such programmes, however, sales would be some 2.5 billion euros less.

"After a particularly difficult 2009, with uneven trading conditions across the group?s international scope of operations, 2010 is positioning itself as a year of transition and stabilisation," it said on Monday.

Fiat imposed a number of temporary layoffs during the height of the global financial downturn in 2008 and 2009.

Italian automaker Fiat on Monday reported a higher-than-expected net loss in 2009 but forecast a return to profit this year as long as European governments continue to offer incentives to buy green.

The automaker announced a net loss of 848 million euros (1.2 billion dollars) in 2009 compared with a profit of 1.721 billion euros the previous year.

Analysts had predicted a net loss of some 320 million euros, according to a consensus compiled by Dow Jones Newswires.

The loss is the first for the Italian icon since its return to profit in 2005 under its dynamic new boss Sergi Marchionne, credited with turning the company around after four straight years in the red.

The group forecast a net profit of between 200 million and 300 million euros in 2010, "subject to continued availability of eco-incentives in the European automotive market," it said.

Schemes such as "cash-for-clunkers" bonuses for swapping in petrol-guzzling cars for more fuel-efficient models will help Fiat achieve a turnover of between 52 billion and 53 billion euros, Fiat said in a statement.

Without such programmes, turnover would be some 2.5 billion euros less, it said.

The Italian group put the loss down to restructuring costs and write-downs related to the "strategic realignment with Chrysler" last year, when the Italian group obtained a 20 percent stake in the ailing US automaker in exchange for access to Fiat technology.

Fiat posted a fourth-quarter 2009 loss of 283 million euros compared with a net profit of 180 million euros a year earlier.

"After a particularly difficult 2009, with uneven trading conditions across the group?s international scope of operations, 2010 is positioning itself as a year of transition and stabilisation," the statement said.

Italian auto maker Fiat said on Friday it had recalled about 500,000 of its Grande Punto and Grande Punto Abarth models in Europe because of a "possible anomaly" in the steering column.

The company said that half the vehicles recalled were in Italy and the rest elsewhere in Europe.

It added that owners were being contacted by letter, asking them to take their cars to Fiat service centers for an evaluation.

The recall was launched on information provided by Fiat dealers.

US automaker Chrysler, which has partnered with Italian Fiat as part of its bankruptcy plan, is considering producing Fiat 500 subcompact cars at its plant in Mexico, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Citing "people familiar with the matter," the newspaper said Chrysler is considering what other Fiat models to introduce to the US market.

Chrysler is looking at making a small Fiat engine for Fiat 500 at a Chrysler plant in Trenton, Michigan, the report said

It is also considering building a Fiat-derived compact car slightly larger than the 500 in the United States, The Journal said, citing an unnamed "person familiar with the plans."

Chrysler and Fiat sealed a deal in June to create a new global auto giant in a milestone for the world industry after the Italian champion stepped in to salvage the bankrupt US firm.

Fiat will at first hold 20 percent of Chrysler Group, with its equity stake rising to 35 percent and eventually to a majority stake as long as targets mandated by the deal are achieved and US government funds are repaid.

EU regulators on Friday approved a tie-up between Italian automaker Fiat and US-based manufacturer Chrysler, saying the move would not hurt competition in Europe.

"After examining the operation, the (European) Commission concluded that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area or any substantial part of it," a statement said.

Chrysler and Fiat sealed a deal last month to create a new global auto giant in a milestone for the world industry after the Italian champion stepped in to salvage the bankrupt US firm.

The move completed a quick restructuring of the number three US automaker in a plan orchestrated and backed financially by the US and Canadian governments after the world economic crisis sped up a decline in the US auto industry.

Fiat will at first hold 20 percent of Chrysler Group, with its equity stake rising to 35 percent and eventually to a majority stake as long as targets mandated by the deal are achieved and US government funds are repaid.

While it has not provided any cash for the alliance, Fiat will bring new technology to help Chrysler develop more fuel-efficient vehicles needed in the US and other markets, and will use Chrysler's sales network in exchange.

The European Commission, the EU's competition watchdog, said its "examination of the transaction showed that the horizontal overlaps between the activities of Chrysler and Fiat are limited."

"The merger would therefore not significantly change the competitive structure of the markets for the manufacture and supply of passenger cars," it said.