Recently appointed head
of the Fiat Automobiles brand Andrea Formica has
reportedly lured out of retirement his former boss at
Toyota Motor Europe, Thierry Dombreval, to take
responsibility for the European sales brief across the
Fiat Group Automobiles (FGA) brand portfolio.
63-year-old Frenchman
Dombreval retired as Toyota Moto Europe's Chief
Operating Officer just under a year ago, after more than
seven years with the Japanese carmaker. That had been
the culmination of a long career that had seen him
taking in stints at Renault and Ford.
The news of
Dombreval's appointment came yesterday from
Automotive News Europe which quoted an internal
document - written by Formica and dated January 10 -
which stated that Dombreval had been "assigned responsibility for the new position of Sales Europe, reporting to
me." Formica had held that position in addition to
responsibility for the Fiat brand.
50-year-old Formica
started his career with Ford Italia before eventually
being promoted to the U.S. carmaker's European
headquarters in Cologne. After five years with Ford
Europe, in 2002, he moved to Toyota where he has been
for the last eight years. Luring 50-year-old Formica to
FGA last September was regarded as a major coup and it
was reported at the time that he had been keen to return
to his native Italy after some years of holding
positions in Cologne and Brussels. It is likely that
Formica was promised a greater leadership role at FGA in
the future. Formica replaced Lorenzo Sistino as CEO of
the Fiat brand with the incumbent being switched to
another position.
Formica arrives at
Fiat Automobiles with a tough job on his hands as sales
are slumping hard across Europe, the result of both the
ending of government-sponsored 'eco' incentive schemes
across the major European markets and the carmaker
continuing its traditional approach of lifting its foot
right off the gas when the times are good. A major lack
of investment in new products sees Fiat presently left
with an ageing model range, in particular a weak
facelift for the key-selling Punto has seen its sales
slipping versus its rivals and has left Fiat poised to
take a panic decision and roll out a further facelift
for the B-segment hatchback later this year. The
next-generation A-segment Panda has been put off until
next year at the earliest and a hastily rebadged version
of Dodge's Journey minivan, due shortly, isn't likely to
create much consumer footfall into dealerships.
The Fiat Group was the
biggest loser amongst the main carmaking groups in
Europe for the full year of 2010 according to data
released by automotive manufacturer body ACEA
earlier this week; it was down over three times (-17.0
percent) the overall market's fall and it shed over two
hundred thousand units (1,041,287 for the full year vs
1,255,310 for 2009). Of the big nine carmaking groups in Europe
the Fiat Group was the worst performer last year, Toyota was the next biggest loser (-16.3 percent) then
Ford (-13.3 percent). The Fiat brand meanwhile ended the
full year of 2010 with 1,016,812 registrations, down
18.8 percent when compared to 825,376 units during the
full year of 2009. That saw the Fiat brand's market
share drop by a full point from 7.0 percent (2009) to
6.0 percent (2010) year-on-year.
