Few jobs in the automotive industry are tougher than running Stellantis in the UK, a classic case of a role with lots of power but very little glory. Incorporated in 2021 following the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and the PSA Group (the latter at the time having only recently merged with Opel-Vauxhall), Stellantis turned to Maria Grazia Davino in September last year to try to bring together these still quite disparate brands from all areas of the market and different countries, each with challenges of their own.
Davino, formerly Stellantis’s head of sales and marketing for Europe, made headlines soon after walking into the firm’s UK headquarters in Coventry by stating publicly that it was facing “major operational issues” – typically related to logistics problems, the dealer network and integrating such disparate back-end invoicing, banking and aftersales systems from different companies – and has since been on the front foot trying to solve them.