Iconic Fiat Plant Sold To Chery
Fiat‘s iconic assembly plant on the Island of Sicily closed on November 24th and has been taken over by an investor.
The plant, which opened in 1970 and manufactured primarily Fiat 500s was sold for a token single euro. Massimo Di Risio, one of Italy’s largest car dealers, is that investor. He plans to re-open the plant as early as late next year to assemble four Chery models.
Thus far, his efforts to rebadge the Chinese vehicles under his DR brand have been unsuccessful, but he hopes that taking the plant over will help change that.
His goal, despite financial problems caused by the initial failure of his rebadged Chery project, is to produce 65,000 cars per year. Di Risio currently owns an assembly plant north of Naples where he manufactures the DR5 (Chery Tiggos), the DR1 (Chery M1) and the DR2 (Chery A1) that will now come from his new plant.
[Source: Left Lane News]
Luke is an energetic automotive journalist who spends his time covering industry news and crawling the internet for the latest breaking story. When he isn't in the office, Luke can be found obsessively browsing used car listings, drinking scotch at his favorite bar and dreaming of what to drive next, though the list grows a lot faster than his bank account. He's always on <A title="@lukevandezande on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/lukevandezande">Twitter</A> looking for a good car conversation. Find Luke on <A title="@lukevandezande on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/lukevandezande">Twitter</A> and <A title="Luke on Google+" href="http://plus.google.com/112531385961538774338?rel=author">Google+</A>.
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