Chapter 369: Underground "Car God"

Fang Hexuan was not too surprised to learn that Giorgio Miron, an Italian tire manufacturer, had connections with the Fiat Group.

On the contrary, the old man said that he had a good personal relationship with Giovanni Agnelli Jr., which made Fang Hexuan look at him with admiration.

Giovanni Agnelli Jr. is the grandson of Fiat founder Giovanni Agnelli Sr. and the current heir and chairman of the Fiat Group.

He took over Fiat Automobile in 1966 and in 1969 he advocated the purchase of 50% of Ferrari's shares, making great contributions to the company's future success.

Since he took over the position of Chairman of Fiat, he has focused on the company's long-term planning, actively cultivated talents, and attached importance to technological innovation, so he was also regarded as an excellent "corporate strategist" by the European business community.

In short, this is an Italian business leader with a long-term vision and high prestige.

It is an honor to be friends with such a person, not to mention that he is the head of Fiat.

When Fang Hexuan took the initiative to ask George Miron about the twists and turns here, the other party said:
"When we were having a party together yesterday, I talked about the negotiations with Mr. Fang to acquire Lamborghini, and Joe took the initiative to ask me some questions. I told him the truth and told him that you were also interested in Ferrari."

Fang Hexuan felt a little itchy in his heart, but asked calmly:
"Oh? What did Mr. Agnelli say next?"

George Milong looked at Fang Hexuan strangely, shook his head and said:

"He didn't talk about Ferrari anymore, but he did introduce us to Mr. Fang's stories in Hong Kong and mainland China."

Fang Hexuan did not ask any further questions. Although he was a little confused, one thing was certain: the head of Fiat was interested in him.

"Mr. Miron, if I may ask you a favor, I would like to visit Mr. Agnelli."

George Miron was a little surprised this time, but he didn't refuse.

"Okay, I'll give it a try."

Before meeting Giovanni Agnelli Jr., Fang Hexuan asked someone to check the man's information.

One piece of information caught his eye: Giovanni Jr. had sent someone to BJ in 1980 to set up a Fiat Automobile representative office.

Fang Hexuan knew that joint venture negotiations with major global automobile brands had already begun.

As early as October 1978, General Motors of the United States proposed the idea of ​​"Sino-foreign joint venture" when visiting Second Automobile Works in Shiyan.

In March 1979, the First Ministry of Machine Building Industry sent a delegation abroad to contact and negotiate with major automobile companies in an attempt to introduce the latest car technology from abroad, but ultimately failed.

Similarly, he also received news that Shanghai Automotive was negotiating privately with West Germany's Volkswagen and also wanted to obtain advanced car R&D and manufacturing technology from this company.

Therefore, Fang Hexuan was sure that Fiat must have seen it and was worried.

According to my memories from my previous life, among many brands, Fiat should be one of the last to enter the mainland.

He had never bought a Fiat car in his previous life and had no interest in the brand, so he knew very little about it. But even so, he knew that when Fiat entered China, other car companies had already begun to establish their presence in the mainland.

Logically speaking, for someone like Giovanni Agnelli Jr. who is good at long-term planning, it is impossible for him not to see how great the potential of the mainland market is. But why did Fiat get up early but arrive late?
Fang Hexuan thought about it carefully for a while and felt that the most likely situations should be the three points of "technology transfer", "Sino-foreign joint venture" and "building factories in the mainland", especially the first point, which might cause Giovanni Agnelli Jr. great concerns.

In order to facilitate the other party's time, Fang Hexuan stayed in Italy for a few more days and finally found an opportunity to meet with the head of Fiat.

This meeting was a simple initial contact. The two sides did not discuss the issue of cooperation in depth. They just chatted about their respective development goals. The only topic of intersection was the feasibility of setting up a factory in the mainland.

The meeting lasted less than two hours. Fang Hexuan talked a lot and the other party listened most of the time. When they said goodbye, he didn't make any promises and didn't even say when they would talk again.

Although Fang Hexuan was slightly disappointed, he also knew that this kind of thing could not be resolved in one or two times. The other party was not the three creditors of Lamborghini, so there was no need for them to ask him for anything.

To put it bluntly, it doesn’t matter to Fiat whether it cooperates or not.

After realizing this, Fang Hexuan was too lazy to stay in Italy any longer.

When the Ferrari 308 was finally delivered to Donatella, he accompanied his Italian lover and drove around the streets of Rome for a day.

On October 10, Fang Hexuan bid farewell to the beauty and set off back to Hong Kong.

The next morning, Fang Hexuan appeared in the office of Global Building as usual.

The employees under him have long been accustomed to it. Whenever the boss goes on a business trip, he always disappears for at least ten days.
As soon as I sat down, the beautiful assistant attentively brought me coffee, and considerately stacked up all the newspapers I had read during my absence from Hong Kong in chronological order and placed them on the upper left corner of my large desk.

Fang Hexuan flipped through the newspaper while drinking coffee. During the half month he was away, the biggest news in Hong Kong was naturally that the Iron Lady turned around from Beijing to visit Hong Kong.

Almost every day, Hong Kong newspapers interpret the conversations between the Iron Lady and the old man in a series of articles, creating a tense feeling as if a storm is about to come.

On the financial page, of course, there will be the stock market falling again, land transaction prices dropping again, and which new property's opening price is lower than expected, etc.

He was reading the newspaper with great interest when the sales director and marketing director who worked at BYD's headquarters downstairs came to report to him.

The sales director was the first to speak. He held up the sales data and said slowly:
"EVO has been on the market for nearly half a month. The data reported by the North American market is that a total of 1337 units have been sold, 462 units have been sold in Europe and the number of units sold in Hong Kong is 115 units. The market results are still to be determined."

After listening to this, Fang Hexuan breathed a sigh of relief. These sets of data were not good, but not bad either, just average.

For a new brand and a new model, you can't ask for more than this kind of start.

To his surprise, he didn't expect the data in Hong Kong to be that bad.

He smiled and looked at the marketing director and asked:
"It's selling well in Hong Kong. How do you promote it?"

"Mr. Fang, the conventional publicity methods are similar to what you explained before, but there are also some off-site factors involved."

"Tell me."

"In local underground racing activities, a driver named Liu Guoxiong, who was touted as the 'Hong Kong racing god', won a race on the 2nd of this month. After that, the sales of EVO have been rising steadily."

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(End of this chapter)