Sergio Marchionne, the magician behind Fiat's spectacular recovery, becomes the head of bankrupt Chrysler with Canadian credentials, a name as a hard driver, and an eye for overlooked talent.

He takes on the vast task of turning round Chrysler, while also moving to sweep up the European Opel end of the stricken GM empire to create the second-biggest auto group in the world after Toyota, with eyes wide open.

"This is a marriage made in heaven industrially," he said of the Chrysler tie-up in an interview with the Financial Times three days ago.

But he also observed that "you are always taking a big gamble when you do something completely new" and "you have to stay humble through these things."

Nuts and bolts

Carlos Ghosn at French Renault achieved something similar when he successfuly tied up with ailing Nissan.

But Renault came badly unstuck in a previous venture with American Motor Cars, which then passed to Chrysler, and Daimler made a disastrous attempt to buy into the US market by taking over Chrysler and then disbanding it.

Marchionne however is taking Fiat, considered by many analysts only a few years ago to be too small and fragile to survive alone, into new pastures in unusual times and by unusual means.

He is known to prefer flat management structures and can be expected to focus on the hierarchy at Chrysler, while getting deep into the nuts and bolts of the business and looking for talented people buried within the organisation.

Fiat 500's success

His hand is strengthened by the fact that, together with Fiat group chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, he has already turned Fiat around from a series of crises in the last years of direct management by the founding Agnelli family.

Although the group has been hit by the global economic downturn, it is not in the dire straits of some companies, and notably the US manufacturers.

Marchionne is making maximum use any inclination of governments to help auto industries to protect tens of thousands of jobs.

And he is using half a century of technology built up by Fiat in the field of small-car technology to "buy" his way into Chrysler without using cash.

The initial post World War II success of Fiat Auto, the main part of the vast Fiat industrial group, was partly built on the tiny Cinquencento, capable of running through the narrow back streets of ancient Italian cities

In 2007, Marchionne decided to launch a revamped city-chic version of this runabout three months early, in keeping with his style for rapid, rigorous and surprising business moves.

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