The Luigi Effect explained.
We all love our little Fiats and Alfas. If we didn’t like the style and quirkyness, there would be no point owning them; have a Ford or a Vauxhall.
It’s also a little like ‘we suffer for our art’.
How many pieces of interior trim have just broken by themselves and fallen off in the footwell? Why do the rear-view mirrors get that sort of glass acne after a few years? Why do clutch cables still snap on the Seicentos, 20 years after they snapped on the Cinq, and 50 years on models before them? Why do calipers seize? Why do the a/c and fan thermostats fail, same problem for 20 years, why do the blower fans break, as they have done for 40 years?
I can tell you why. Exactly why. It’s NOT faulty design, and it’s not mileage or age related.
It’s Luigi’s brother-in-law. He’s why all these things break.
Here’s how it works.
Luigi is in procurement for the assembly line; his equivalent in Poland is called Stefan.
The newest model is being made, but due to tariffs or the price of steel or something, Head Office needs to get the price down by £5 or Euros per car. So they need to trim the cost of a few little bits, by pennies.
Step forward Luigi. “My brother-in-law can make those at parts 10% cheaper than we are getting at the moment,” he says.
His brother-in-law gets the gig. Trouble is, his brother-in-law is a bit dodgy, so the clutch cable is 1mm narrower than spec. The plastic retainers on the interior trim push together but are not sturdy enough to click right home. His door panels have brittle fasteners that crack. His moulding for the right-hand side rear wheel arch trim on 319 Pandas skimps a little on the plastic pins that go through the hole in the arch so they work themselves free and fall off (yes, Panda owners, you know what I’m saying…). His electronics are subcontracted to mainland China, not Korea… you get the idea.
So these parts last long enough to get through the first owner and the warranty, right up to the mid-life model revision.
At that point, the QC department brings up all these customer and dealership complaints about things breaking and falling off. Luigi goes to see his brother-in-law and says he’s got to up his game.
However, his brother-in-law has been making a fortune selling the parts department stock, and he’s got a nice side business going on selling OEM quality parts online cheaper than Fiat. Plus, Luigi is getting brown envelopes of cash every month.
You see the problem. No one wants this fixed, and Fiat have moved on to the next model lol.
Luigi pops up to the management in procurement and tells them he’s given the supplier a bloody good bollocking. The folks in the QC department get a surprise delivery of champagne and shopping vouchers. The dealers get a memo telling them that all the failures are down to customer use errors or a freak manufacturing error that just affected a small number of cars.
The designers get told that there’s absolutely no point redesigning those parts; procurement don’t want to interrupt production by switching suppliers. Luigi buys a new house… and his brother-in-law?
His brother-in-law paid for his daughter’s lavish wedding in Tuscany with the proceeds from the sale of 178,970 Panda rear wheel arch trims.
We all love our little Fiats and Alfas. If we didn’t like the style and quirkyness, there would be no point owning them; have a Ford or a Vauxhall.
It’s also a little like ‘we suffer for our art’.
How many pieces of interior trim have just broken by themselves and fallen off in the footwell? Why do the rear-view mirrors get that sort of glass acne after a few years? Why do clutch cables still snap on the Seicentos, 20 years after they snapped on the Cinq, and 50 years on models before them? Why do calipers seize? Why do the a/c and fan thermostats fail, same problem for 20 years, why do the blower fans break, as they have done for 40 years?
I can tell you why. Exactly why. It’s NOT faulty design, and it’s not mileage or age related.
It’s Luigi’s brother-in-law. He’s why all these things break.
Here’s how it works.
Luigi is in procurement for the assembly line; his equivalent in Poland is called Stefan.
The newest model is being made, but due to tariffs or the price of steel or something, Head Office needs to get the price down by £5 or Euros per car. So they need to trim the cost of a few little bits, by pennies.
Step forward Luigi. “My brother-in-law can make those at parts 10% cheaper than we are getting at the moment,” he says.
His brother-in-law gets the gig. Trouble is, his brother-in-law is a bit dodgy, so the clutch cable is 1mm narrower than spec. The plastic retainers on the interior trim push together but are not sturdy enough to click right home. His door panels have brittle fasteners that crack. His moulding for the right-hand side rear wheel arch trim on 319 Pandas skimps a little on the plastic pins that go through the hole in the arch so they work themselves free and fall off (yes, Panda owners, you know what I’m saying…). His electronics are subcontracted to mainland China, not Korea… you get the idea.
So these parts last long enough to get through the first owner and the warranty, right up to the mid-life model revision.
At that point, the QC department brings up all these customer and dealership complaints about things breaking and falling off. Luigi goes to see his brother-in-law and says he’s got to up his game.
However, his brother-in-law has been making a fortune selling the parts department stock, and he’s got a nice side business going on selling OEM quality parts online cheaper than Fiat. Plus, Luigi is getting brown envelopes of cash every month.
You see the problem. No one wants this fixed, and Fiat have moved on to the next model lol.
Luigi pops up to the management in procurement and tells them he’s given the supplier a bloody good bollocking. The folks in the QC department get a surprise delivery of champagne and shopping vouchers. The dealers get a memo telling them that all the failures are down to customer use errors or a freak manufacturing error that just affected a small number of cars.
The designers get told that there’s absolutely no point redesigning those parts; procurement don’t want to interrupt production by switching suppliers. Luigi buys a new house… and his brother-in-law?
His brother-in-law paid for his daughter’s lavish wedding in Tuscany with the proceeds from the sale of 178,970 Panda rear wheel arch trims.
- Model
- All fiats and Alfas!
