The automaking giant behind Jeep, Ram, and Chrysler has a new leader at the helm: John Elkann, heir to one of Europe’s storied industrial dynasties.
Elkann has finally stepped out from the background to assume control over Stellantis, for the first time ever running day-to-day operations at the world’s sixth largest auto group by vehicle sales.
Last Sunday, Elkann accepted the resignation of his embattled CEO, Carlos Tavares, after a disastrous nine months that left the company’s U.S. dealers seething with anger.
To get a behind-the-scenes look at the enigmatic 48-year-old, Fortune spoke with Jennifer Clark, author of L’Ultima Dinastia, or The Last Dynasty, a history of the family behind Fiat.
While the book was unauthorized, Elkann did sit down to speak with Clark on multiple occasions to provide his own personal perspective on his family’s turbulent past.
She paints a picture of a sober, earnest, and unpretentious businessman driven by one principal desire: to ensure the family fortune can be passed on to the next generation, even if that means taking unorthodox steps.
He’s already reshaped the 125-year-old carmaker—once the beating heart of Italy’s economy under his larger-than-life grandfather, Gianni Agnelli—not once but twice, first by acquiring Chrysler a decade ago and then later joining forces with rival French carmaker Peugeot SA in 2021.
“John doesn’t have a sentimental attachment to Fiat like his grandfather did,” Clark tells Fortune. “He’s much more detached. He already has done things his grandfather never would, like merging the company and moving the headquarters out of Italy.”
His pragmatic, no-nonsense style likewise means he can pivot on a dime should circumstances require it.
“When Fiat Chrysler was in talks with Renault, he just decided in the course of an evening to walk away,” she recalls.
A life shaped by responsibility
Born in 1976 in New York as the eldest of three children from a marriage that soon fell apart, he had a strained relationship with his mother after she remarried and felt a natural responsibility for his brother Lapo and sister Ginevra.
“Ginevra was maybe only 1 or 2 when their parents divorced. The three siblings are the family,” says Clark.
Elkann grew up in numerous countries, including Brazil, where he learned to speak Portuguese in addition to fluent English and Italian before attending high school in Paris.
“Their mother is Catholic, their father is Jewish, their stepfather is Russian Orthodox—they lived in all different countries, spoke all different languages, so it was quite eclectic,” Clark adds. “Apart from vacationing, John had never actually lived in Italy until he began his engineering studies in Turin.”
It was his willingness to step up and assume responsibility paired with an innate curiosity and interest in the family business that Gianni Agnelli came to prize when John spent more time in Turin attending university there.
Family tragedy
Elkann is anything but unprepared for his current role, however.
He was thrust into the family business at a very young age, having been appointed to the board of Fiat at just 21 years old.
One of the first crises to test his mettle came shortly after his grandfather passed away in 2003, at a time when the company was financially on its last legs. He arranged for a fresh infusion of family capital to bolster the company, which proved key to renegotiating the terms of its crushing bank debt.
A factor that may have played a role in his early succession was the tragic past of the Agnellis.
Elkann’s great-grandfather perished in a gruesome flying accident when he was thrown headfirst into his plane’s propeller.
His uncle, Edoardo, jumped from a bridge in Turin to his death under circumstances that remain unclear today, while Elkann’s cousin died at the age of 33 from a rare form of cancer.
And in 2005 his very own brother Lapo narrowly escaped death from an overdose.
By comparison, Elkann keeps a low profile, staying out of the boulevard press unlike his colorful, free-spirited brother—or indeed his grandfather, who famously romanced Rita Hayworth and supposedly even Jackie Kennedy.
Shaping Stellantis’s future
Elkann may stay in the background at Stellantis, but he serves as CEO of the exchange-listed family investment holding company Exor, which manages the family’s various economic interests.
These include the Italian football club Juventus, with whom the family is inextricably entwined, and, importantly, a 24.6% stake in Ferrari, where he also serves as chairman of the board.
Following the pandemic, Elkann took a $2.8 billion bet in the health care space by acquiring 15% of Philips last year, with Exor becoming the single largest shareholder in the Dutch health tech group.
Elkann is also keen on engaging in the tech startup scene and hosted OpenAI boss Sam Altman at Italian Tech Week in October.
“To last, you need to renew yourself and make sure what you do remains current,” he told Nicolai Tangen, the manager of Norway’s $1.8 trillion sovereign wealth fund.
Given the family history of tragedy, would he groom his own children to one day take up the reins?
“I’ve asked him that. He won’t answer directly. Suffice to say he’s looking for someone willing to start all over again with a whole new set of assumptions,” Clark replies. “And they have to be keen and hungry, not willing simply out of a sense of duty.”
Should he find a new CEO for Stellantis, it’s likely that will be his criteria as well.
