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7 AutoData | June 2018 Suggestions, criticisms, comments, offenses and the like for this column can be directed to the email vi@autodata.com.br Disclousure/FCA CRAVATTA PER TUTTI Nothing like generating profit to encourage certain elegance incensed with a touch of formality. This is what happened the other day, on Friday, June 1, in Balocco, near Milan, when a rare well-dressed Sergio Marchionne – by nothing less than John Elkann, Gianni Agnelli’s grandson -, announced good FCA results: “That’s why the tie is so important today, because since 2007 I was not able to deliver the great results we have now, and that we will have a strong future as we project in this new plan by 2022”. He was very pleased because “since 2004 I do not see such a good position. Maybe I have to search at the history of Fiat of the last century a situation as strong as the one we live today.” CRAVATTA PER TUTTI 2 Here’s what he said about the Rota 2030 project: “If the program is not approved it will influence all brands, and all of us will have to adopt a strategy based on other parameters, like opting for electrification. But we have to take advantage of the potential of the region, such as ethanol, flex fuel. (...) If it is not approved, which would be a huge mistake, we will have a great loss for the environment.” GM VEHICLES COME FROM CHINA The local vehicle industry, along with its recognized virtues, emphasizes the local character of its developments, the presence and leadership of hundreds of Brazilian engineers in decisive positions in global projects, their fabulous investments in this area. It always supports projects such as Inovar Auto and Rota 2030 and expecting them to contain a lot of R&D investments. But in the case of General Motors in what it seems like the company decided to innovate even if this type of innovation does not appear in its press releases: the company decided to reduce at minimum level its engineering area based in São Caetano do Sul, SP. GM VEHICLES COME FROM CHINA 2 This way the future will show, in Brazil, vehicles developed basically in... China. The hallways, as well as those people fired, say that few engineers are dismissed every week “not to be so evident”. It is people with a lot of company time, usually personnel internally forged and that should not be replaced because the vacancies have been extinguished: it will remain small contingent necessary for the progress of what is coming.