215,000 vehicles produced in a year. Less than Portugal, less than Italy produced in 1957. This was the starting point for the second edition ofLeggere il presente, the SDA Bocconi Roma book club that uses books as a lens through which to examine the transformations reshaping the country.

Gimede Gigante, Director of the Rome Campus, opened the event by noting that the question of the automotive industry reaches well beyond a single sector: it touches technology, industrial policy, competitiveness, and the way the country understands itself. These were the themes at the heart of a conversation between Francesco Zirpoli, full professor at Ca' Foscari University and director of the Observatory on the Italian automotive supply chain, author ofAuto-distruzione. Crisi e trasformazione dell'industria dell'automobile(Laterza), and Maurizio Landini, Secretary General of the CGIL and author ofUn'altra storia(Piemme), moderated by Stefano Feltri, journalist.

The question that titles the event is not rhetorical. Zirpoli addressed it with the precision of someone who has studied the sector for years: the collapse of Italian automotive production is not the result of a recent crisis, but of a decades-long process of disinvestment. The merger of FCA and PSA that created Stellantis accelerated a logic already in motion, shifting engineering expertise away from Turin and concentrating investment elsewhere — in Spain, where around one million vehicles are produced annually, and in Morocco, where productive capacity has already overtaken that of all Italian plants combined. The ACC Gigafactory that could have been built in Termoli never materialised. "We have become the industrial and political periphery of Europe," Zirpoli said, stressing that the problem is not only one of volumes: Italy produces no electric vehicles, and the digital transformation of vehicle architecture is happening elsewhere.

Landini brought a perspective shaped from within that same history. First as leader of the FIOM metalworkers' union during the most difficult years of the confrontation with Marchionne, then as Secretary General of Italy's largest trade union, he traced the logic behind battles that, seen today, reflect an industrial coherence as much as a labour one. The FIOM's proposals on plant utilisation, rejected at the time, were designed to secure production and workers' rights without undermining the national collective agreement. "We could not see an industrial plan, an investment plan that gave us any credible sense that this would secure the future of our work," he said. Looking at the present, Landini was clear about the core issue: Stellantis has four plants with a theoretical capacity of over one and a half million vehicles and produces fewer than a quarter of that, without the models to fill them. His proposal — deliberately provocative — is to open Italy to Chinese manufacturers, on the condition that they bring real investment and real production, not simply assembly. "If nothing is done, sooner or later someone will come and tell us there are too many plants and they need to close."

It was Feltri who drew the thread connecting that era to the present: the battles of the Marchionne years, which at the time appeared to be a confrontation over labour costs, now read as a reflection of an industrial plan that was already inadequate. The bill for those choices has come due, and no one seems to have fully understood what to do about it.

Both speakers converged on the European dimension of the crisis. Zirpoli noted that Europe's patent base in the automotive sector remains strong, and that the technological gap with China could be closed relatively quickly — but only if European politics recovers its cohesion. "No single European country has the strength to close this gap alone." Landini agreed: Italy's automotive problem is also the problem of a country that has never built an adequate industrial policy, and that is now paying the price of its dependence on a single large manufacturer in a sector where other countries have always had two, three, or four.

The audience — professionals, managers and academics — engaged actively in the second part of the event, with questions that explored Italy's relationship with China, the role of finance in Fiat's history, and the concrete prospects for a recovery.

Leggere il presenteis an ongoing series that uses books as a starting point for discussion of the transformations shaping contemporary Italy. 

To find out about upcoming events, visit the SDA Bocconi Roma events calendar.

SDA Bocconi School of Management