The Italian automobile company, Gruppo Bertone or Carozzeria Bertone specializes on car styling, coach building and manufacturing. Since 1912 it has been improving the images of various Italian cars among which are Lamborghini Miura, the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint and the Fiat X1/9. It has also done some designing work for foreign manufacturers like Volvo, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Skoda and Citroen.

Since early 2008 Bertone has been under court protection from bankruptcy. Several representatives wanted to get it: Nuccio Bertone's widow, Lilli, China's FAW Group and the automaker Fiat. In the end the Italian government has decided to approve Fiat as the new owner of Gruppo Bertone.

Over the upcoming three years Fiat is planning to invest $216 million into the restructurisation of the Bertone facility and start the produciton of vehicles there which will go to European and American customers. Although the manufacturer has big changing plans Bertone is still controlled by Bertone family as it has been for almost a century.

Fiat has been expanding its territory for a while: it acquired such Italian companies as Autobianchi (1968), Lancia (1969), Ferrari (1969), Alfa Romeo (1986) and Maserati (1993). This year Fiat took control over American Chrysler and has active work over there. It had several other projects that failed, for example, the automaker wanted to take over Opel, but it went to Russian-Canadian partnership.

Article key :  Fiat Takes over One More Company, Fiat, One More Company, 2009, 2010