Fiat design focuses on Italian innovation

File - Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010 file photo of an Alfa Romeo MiTo car displayed at the Fiat Style Center in Turin, Italy. The world is still waiting to see what kind of auto design emerges from the alliance of Italy's Fiat and U.S. Chrysler. One thing is clear: there's a lot of Italian flair to draw on, in the person of Fiat's design chief Lorenzo Ramaciotti. Ramaciotti helped design everything from the high-end Ferrari Enzo to the economical Peugeot 407 during his career at independent styling house Pininfarina. Expect some surprises ahead.

TURIN, Italy — The world is still waiting to see what kind of auto design emerges from the alliance of Italy's Fiat and U.S. Chrysler. One thing is clear: there's a lot of Italian flair to draw on, in the person of Fiat's design chief Lorenzo Ramaciotti.

Ramaciotti helped design everything from the high-end Ferrari Enzo to the economical Peugeot 407 during his career at independent styling house Pininfarina. Expect some surprises ahead.
"Italian design can't be repetitive. It must be a design that is a little surprising, with something innovative from one model to the next," said Ramaciotti in an interview in his modest office at Fiat's Centro Stile, decorated with logos of the six Fiat brands whose style he commands.
How much of that Italian flair will seep into the Chrysler's designs is still being worked out, nearly a year after Fiat took a controlling stake in the United States' third-largest automaker. Chrysler has its own design operation, but Ramaciotti would be key partner in any cooperation.
In the Ramaciotti world, cars aren't mere vessels of transport — but an expression of an idea. Fiat is fun and friendly, simple solutions. Alfa Romeo is fast, sporty, attention-grabbing.
"If you have a car that takes you from point A to point B, why not have it be nice? If you are capable, why not?" Ramaciotti asks.
Lancia, which is being twinned with the Chrysler brand, will be the harbinger of Italian design: "Good taste, proportionality, all the elements that we are recognized for," he said. By "we," he meant Italian design, not Fiat.
"Italian automobile design was for many years the beacon for the world. Now it has been weakened. Why? Because we exported our design culture," Ramaciotti said. First to Japan, where Italians designed a lot of cars in the 1970s. Then in Korea, for Daewoo and Hyundai, and now China.
Ramaciotti's first move at Fiat was to bring all of Fiat's brands, except the extremely expensive Ferrari, under one roof. No longer designing cars himself, Ramaciotti oversees the the process — keeping the creative staff on deadline — at Fiat's sprawling 20,000-square-meter (215,280 sq. feet) design center at the Mirafiori plant in Turin.
Ramaciotti has a broad portfolio, six brands under one roof: the flagship Fiat brand, sporty Alfa Romeo, up-market Lancia, luxury Maserati, amped-up Abarth and sturdy Fiat light commercial vehicles. The two companies will share platforms and the first Fiat to return to the U.S. market — the Cinquecento, or 500 — is being rolled out later this year, with a few tweaks aimed at American tastes.
The car will look the same on the outside as the original compact retro-chic three-door hatchback that has charmed Europeans. But the American market required some adjustments: wider seats, cupholders, arm rests, automatic transmissions, and larger license plate holders. Fiat is offering colors, like sand, that are more suited to American tastes than, say, the Italian green-white-and-red striped paint job sold in Europe.
"The general flavor of the car has remained very much Italian," Ramaciotti said. "It has such personality that we think that even the Americans will buy it in the Italian colors.
"Someone who buys a 500 does not buy it just as a means of transport, but because it is cute and European."
Fiat isn't expecting to sell huge volumes of the 500 in the United States — around 50,000 to 80,000 a year — figuring the appeal for the tiny car will mostly be in big cities. But it is the car that relaunched the Fiat brand in Europe. And it will be the Fiat that introduces American drivers to Chrysler's new bosses.
While the tiny 500 will be Fiat's Italian emissary to North America, the zippy new Giulietta, Alfa Romeo's latest launch, is unlikely to make the trans-Atlantic passage. The Giulietta is a hatchback, and Americans have scorned hatchbacks, despite all their practicality, in favor of SUVs and crossovers, Ramaciotti said.
The Giulietta made its debut at the Geneva auto show and will go on sale later this month in Europe. It is the car that is supposed to relaunch the Alfa Romeo brand and give it a new chance after a disappointing couple of years.
But what will go to the United States is the new Compact platform that the Giulietta is built on — a billion-dollar investment that Marchionne wants to squeeze at least one million cars from.
In fact, much of what Fiat contributes to Chrysler will not be visible to consumers in terms of style but in the form of cleaner-burning engines and small-car platforms. In Europe, Fiat expects to take advantage of Chrysler's larger car and minivan platforms.
So far in the alliance, Fiat and Chrysler are maintaining separate design centers. Still, the Fiat and Chrysler alliance is slowly growing more entwined, as evident in the appointment of Lancia brand CEO Olivier Francois to run the Chrysler brand.
The Fiat Design Center has been holding back several new models, waiting for the crisis to abate.
Ramaciotti won't say how many, deferring until April 21, when Fiat presents its new five-year business plan.
Analysts expect Fiat will announce plans for a new Panda in 2011, the next generation Punto, new small vans, sometimes called multi-purpose vehicles or MPVs, possibly based on Chrysler's successful minivan, still known in Europe as the Grand Voyager and in the United States as Town & Country. Fiat may also announce a new Lancia Ypsilon, a new Lancia Delta, as well as mid-size and large sedans, based on Chrysler platforms. And there may be a new flagship car for Alfa Romeo.
"To come out with a new car in such a depressed market means losing 20 percent of sales. The peak, when you theoretically should sell the most cars, is when you present the car. You risk ruining yourself at the best moment," Ramaciotti said.
"On the other hand, you can't rely only on the old lineup of cars, with the old cars for an eternity. It's a difficult choice."

President Zardari to sign 18th Amendment tomorrow

Nawaz Sharif is expected to be present at the ceremony after having accepted the president’s invitation 

 

ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari is set to sign the eighteenth constitutional amendment bill on Monday.
President Zardari has invited PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif at the presidency to attend the bill-signing ceremony, presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar told DawnNews.
Sharif is expected to be present at the ceremony after having accepted the president’s invitation, sources said.
Meanwhile, chief ministers of all four provinces will also be present in the ceremony.
The eighteenth amendment will become the part of the constitution after Zardari signs it on Monday.
Babar said arrangements are being finalised for “a ceremony befitting the historical occasion of reforming the constitution, and ridding it of all undemocratic clauses inserted in it by successive dictatorships.”

Nuclear hazards

Even Obama, who seems to have all the answers to Pakistan’s nuclear programme, has indicated that he does not know what became of a secret $100m grant that the Bush administration gave Pakistan to secure its nuclear stockpile. - Photo by Reuters.

For those in Pakistan who have questions about nuclear security, this past week they should have finally learned to stop worrying and to love the bomb instead. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani assured US President Barack Obama that “appropriate safeguards” were in place to protect the country’s arsenal.

Pakistan declared itself competent in matters of nuclear security, and even offered to share its hard-earned wisdom on how to prevent the trafficking of nuclear materials with the world.

In response, Britain declared itself satisfied with Pakistan’s measures to secure its nuclear weapons. China trumpeted the cause of enhanced nuclear security as the way forward in a world where all countries had the right to use nuclear energy peacefully. And a personage no less than the US president himself assured the world that Pakistan had strengthened port security and taken other measures to prevent future proliferation.

A strategically timed report, titled Securing the Bomb 2010, by Harvard University’s Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs, offered the only note of dissent. The report states that Pakistan’s stockpile faces a “great threat” from Islamic extremists seeking nuclear weapons and that “there is a very real possibility that sympathetic insiders might carry out or assist in a nuclear theft, or that a sophisticated outsider attack (possibly with insider help) could overwhelm the defences”.

And so the debate about the security of Pakistan’s arsenal continues. But one voice is conspicuously absent from the discussion — that of the average Pakistani citizen. The fact is the conversation about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear programme has always been between our establishment and that of the United States (and, on occasion, the International Atomic Energy Agency or members of the international community). Despite the fact that Pakistanis themselves are in closest proximity to the country’s nuclear activities, the government and military have not deemed it necessary to engage the public with assurances of safety and security.

Pakistan’s nuclear security debate has always proceeded at international forums. In November 2007, when IAEA chief Mohamed El Baradei warned that the country’s arsenal was at risk, Pakistani security officials held a special briefing for western, rather than local, journalists. The first indication that Pakistan had taken any measures to safeguard its weapons came in February 2008, when Ashley Tellis, an associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the US House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on South Asia that Pakistan’s “strategic assets … are fundamentally safe”. And now we have further assurances in the form of the nuclear policy report that Pakistan presented at the summit in Washington.

The problem with this discussion proceeding at international venues is that the concerns of the global community and those of the Pakistani public do not align. The world is worried about Pakistan’s arsenal or fissile material falling into the hands of terrorists who would attack western targets. Lingering concerns about nuclear proliferation also remain.
No doubt, Pakistanis too should be concerned about these scenarios. But we should also be worried about radiation leaks, nuclear waste dumping, the long-term environmental hazards emanating from storage and waste sites, the socio-economic impact of financing our nuclear programme, and the political and ideological biases of those running the show at the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), which oversees nuclear operations.

Take, for example, the issue of transporting nuclear waste to dumping sites. Pakistan continues to produce fissile material and is adding to its production facilities in the form of a second nuclear reactor, built to produce weapons-grade plutonium, and a third reactor that is still under construction. This increased production will inevitably produce waste, which has to be transported in special container casks designed for spent fuel from nuclear reactors and power plants.

These containers can be transported on trucks or by rail. A severe accident — the collapse of a bridge, a train derailment — could result in the breach of a nuclear cask and the spillage of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel. Exposure to such a spill could kill dozens of people in the vicinity and lead to more cancer deaths in the future.

Pakistanis are currently unaware of the location of most nuclear waste sites, and certainly do not know the routes utilised to transport nuclear waste across the country. They have no assurances that the concerned authorities are using the appropriate casks of steel and lead, which should be a minimum of five inches thick, during transport. Nor can they be sure that the nuclear material being transported is embedded, as per international regulations, in a clay-like material that is penetrable only by fire.

Finally, they do not know if the government and military have the funds available to clean up a radiation leak in the event of a spent nuclear fuel accident (the US Energy Department has estimated the cost of tackling a radioactive leak to be between $300,000 and $10bn, depending on the location, weather conditions, and other variables).

This is a concern that should be among others playing on the minds of Pakistanis when they hear their leadership’s ambitious nuclear aspirations. Now that Pakistan has offered advanced nuclear fuel cycle services to the world, civil society should start asking tough questions of the SPD about measures taken to ensure nuclear safety within Pakistan, beyond the gambit of terrorism.

Our civilian government should also prepare to answer questions on how — in a time of fiscal crisis, when food inflation and loadshedding are crippling our economy and driving poor Pakistanis to suicide — we are paying for our nuclear programme. Even Obama, who seems to have all the answers to Pakistan’s nuclear programme, has indicated that he does not know what became of a secret $100m grant that the Bush administration gave Pakistan to secure its nuclear stockpile.

If the establishment yearns for nuclear legitimacy, it must have regard for transparency and accountability — certainly, to the international community, but above all, to Pakistanis who have long supported a nuclear Pakistan.