Fiat Auto's other main owners include US car giant General Motors, which holds a 10% stake.
For Fiat Auto, the plan is to blitz the market with a variety of new models.
Fiat Auto has limped along for years, suffering from an over-ambitious global plan and ageing products.
Now he is due to take over at Fiat Auto from Giancarlo Boschetti, who retires next year.
It appears that there may be a debate within the Agnelli family about the fate of Fiat Auto.
Fiat also has an option to sell the remaining 80% of Fiat Auto to GM from next year.
Mr Montezemolo knows all about business turnarounds: he rescued Ferrari and has helped to pull Fiat Auto back from the brink.
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Italy's Fiat Auto, of which GM owns 20%, is in deep trouble.
He had also previously served in a variety of roles within the Fiat organisation, including a long stint as chief executive of Fiat Auto during the 1980s.
Meanwhile Fiat Auto, which will remain in the holding company, will be free to gain scale from mergers or partnerships with other car firms and to raise capital.
Mr Demel at Fiat Auto says he stands by the goal of breaking even at the operating level in 2005, and moving out of net losses a year later.
At a marathon presentation in Turin of his five-year plan for Fiat on April 21st he confirmed, as expected, that he is planning to separate Fiat's other businesses from Fiat Auto as a precursor to creating a combined entity with Chrysler.
On December 10th the boss of Fiat Auto, Roberto Testore, resigned, paying the price for his failure to sort out the problems of the Italian group's car-making business, which staggers from loss to loss even as the European car market booms.
The Agnellis resisted several foreign attempts to take over the group throughout the 1990s, but eventually did a deal with General Motors under which the American carmaker bought 20% of Fiat Auto, and Fiat Auto acquired 5% of GM (which it has since sold to raise cash).
This may eventually lead to a merger of Ifil with Fiat, opening the door to an outside investor being brought in to rescue the Fiat Auto division, which is labouring under a heavy dependence on the Italian market, a lack of scale and earlier diversification into difficult emerging markets such as Brazil.
Fiat and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne told Reuters at the Detroit auto show that Fiat plans to introduce an Alfa Romeo 4C sports car to the U.S. market late this year.
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No better example of that is Fiat, the Italian auto maker that came to the rescue of Chrysler in 2009 when it emerged from bankruptcy.
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Divorced from Randolph in 1945, Pamela moved to France, dallied with playboy prince Aly Khan, had the Churchill marriage annulled--while keeping the name--and converted to Catholicism in an effort to marry Gianni Agnelli, bachelor head of auto giant Fiat.
Volkswagen has been determinedly individualistic about dealing with fallout from the European auto crisis, infamously sparring with Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne about the need for a coordinated drawdown in continental production capacity.
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Yet, thanks to President Obama's auto task-force and a shotgun marriage with Fiat, Chrysler motors wearily on.
The slump has been devastating to auto manufacturers that are heavily dependent on European sales like Fiat, Peugeot and Renault.
The initial equity structure after June 2009 bankruptcy left the United Auto Workers medical fund with two-thirds of the equity, Fiat with 20%, the U.S. government just shy of 10%, and the Canadian government with 2.5%.
Mr Agnelli had adopted a strategy of nursing Fiat's core car business back to health, but the group remains under pressure to put the auto unit up for sale.
Clearly, Chrysler and Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne learned from his stylistic godfather, Lee Iacocca, when he invaded the U.S. auto industry with his gutsy decision to pick up the carcass of Chrysler in 2009.
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