Alfa Romeo's Pomigliano d'Arco site near Naples will also be hard hit, with 1,500 to 2,000 jobs being lost. Currently it builds the Alfa 147, 159 sedan and Sportwagon (above) and GT Coupé, and it will switch to producing the Fiat Panda next year to ease pressure on the Tychy plant in Poland.

With Fiat's much-vaunted new Italian business plan less than a month away from being announced information and rumours are starting to drip out that paint a bleak picture with jobs losses and a cut in the model range, although overall Italian output is expected to rise significantly. Both the Italian daily newspaper, La Repubblica, yesterday, and industry publication Automotive News Europe, today, have leaked details from the plan, quoting sources familiar with the situation.

Fiat will axe nearly 5,000 jobs in Italy, more than was expected. Around 1,400 jobs are already set to be lost when the Termini Imerese plant in Sicily which builds the Lancia Ypsilon closes late next year and La Repubblica says the new losses will come on top of these earmarked redundancies.

The bulk of the jobs will be shed at Mirafiori which has nearly 6,000 employees. The giant factory in Fiat's hometown currently assembles Fiat's Punto Classic, Idea and Multipla, as well as Lancia's Musa and Alfa Romeo's MiTo. The MiTo will continue unscathed at the plant but the Punto Classic will soon be phased out as Fiat's new factory in Serbia already builds the ageing model, while the next-generation Lancia Ypsilon, to be manufactured in Poland, will be a five-door model, thus allowing it to replace both the current 3-door Ypsilon and the 5-door Musa. This will leave replacements for the Idea and the Multipla to come down a brand new production line that will also build the MiTo, which has sold in lesser numbers than forecast, greatly reducing staffing requirements.

According to the media sources the Italian government and Fiat's unions have already been informed of the plan, which will also see the Fiat Group Automobiles' Italian model range chopped down to eight models, although annual Italian vehicle production is forecast to rise by almost a third to 900,000 units. Some of the job losses will come from future Fiat, Lancia and Alfa Romeo models being built by Chrysler Group at its North American factories with sources putting combined production figures at up to 350,000 units. These will include rebadged versions of Chrysler's 300 series, Voyager MPV and Sebring sedan and cabriolet for Lancia as well as a Fiat denoted version of Dodge's Nito. This figure excludes the Fiat 500 which will be built in Mexico from the end of the year with annual production targets of 100,000 units but won't be imported to Europe from this location.

Alfa Romeo's Pomigliano d'Arco site near Naples will also be hard hit, with 1,500 to 2,000 jobs being lost. Currently it builds the Alfa 147, 159 sedan and Sportwagon and GT Coupé, and it will switch to producing the Fiat Panda next year to ease pressure on the Tychy plant in Poland. This is expected to be a strategic decision to reduce the importance of the plant and its symbolic and close historic link with Alfa Romeo (the storied factory has also built the Alfasud, Sprint and 33 models in the past) before shuttering it in the future. Finally, according to La Repubblica, the Cassino plant will shed 500 workers and all the job cuts will be announced when the business plan is unveiled on April 21.