FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
PARIS — Ten years ago Carlos Tavares was recruited by Thierry Peugeot, a descendant of Armand Peugeot who at the end of the 19th century had taken the family business from coffee grinders to bicycles and then to cars. Those were the times of the alliance of the PSA group (Peugeot-Citroën) with the Chinese of DongFeng, and at the time it was said that Tavares was in reality the man of the Chinese, determined to increase up to 20-30% by relying on him to heal the group.
History went differently, the Chinese of DongFeng have almost disappeared (last November they fell to 1.58 percent by selling shares to Stellantis itself for 934 million euros), the great global alliance of the French group was made not with China but with the Americans and Italians of Fiat Chrysler.
Carlos Tavares, however, remained, head of PSA and then of Stellantis, ever more powerful, always ready to play cross-border between countries in order to serve the company’s interests and therefore his own (in 2022 Tavares received a salary of 23 and a half million euros, equal to 64 thousand and 328 per day).
Born 65 years ago in Lisbon to a Francophile family, at 14 race commissioner at the Estoril circuit, studying engineering in Paris, the strong man of Stellantis is obsessed with cars. Since he was still a boy he had been tricking out the Alfasud given to him by his father to race in rallies, to racing behind the wheel of the “Clé menteam Racing” Porsche (in honor of his eldest daughter Clé mentem).
The car guy Tavares is also a communications man capable of taking some risks in public interventions. A few months before Thierry Peugeot’s call, Tavares was Renault’s number two and was kicked out, in September 2013, for an interview with which he effectively put himself on the market: “Whoever reaches the top in the automotive sector wants to at some point to become number one. For example, General Motors, why not? I would be honored to lead such a group.”
Outraged by the presumption, the then great Renault boss Carlos Ghosn torpedoed him. The times proved the Portuguese right: after his arrest in Japan and his daring escape, Ghosn lost everything and lives half-hidden in Lebanon. After being courted by Volkswagen and Astor Martin immediately after his farewell to Renault, Tavares has been number one, perhaps not of General Motors but of the giant Stellantis, since his birth in 2021.
At the head of a multinational group, Tavares does not hesitate to anger the governments of individual countries who think they have a right of pre-emption and a say in the matter. Last July, when French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire asked him to show “patriotism” and bring the production of small electric vehicles such as the Peugeot e-208 to France, Tavares replied without hesitation that instead Stellantis’ intention was “clearly that of producing more models in Italian factories”, starting with the one in Melfi in the south of the country.
Those were the days when there were tales of an valorisation of the “charm of Made in Italy” also in the automobile, and therefore we thought of Italy not only for the electric Panda or 600 but also for “high-end electric vehicles”. with strong added value”, according to a Stellantis press release from the same July 2023. And then there was talk of the gigafactory in Termoli… Which will arrive, perhaps, after 2026. But in the meantime the one in Douvrin, in France, has already been inaugurated. And now it’s Italy’s turn to feel backed into a corner.
2024-01-25 06:44:06
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