We thought he was the heir to the oracle of Omaha, in the sense of Warren Buffet and instead the oracle of Ivrea, in the sense of De Benedetti Carlo, has unpredictably transformed into Alvaro Vitali 2.0. Latest news from the Engineer who is slowly approaching ninety years old but as a former tiger he still retains his hunger and clings to fame. Interviewed by a La7 journalist, Carlo De Benedetti revealed a phone call from Elkann following the interview that the CDB himself had given to Il Foglio in which he had said «Elkann destroyed Repubblica»: «Without mentioning the interview, because he is a fearful one, he says, but you know you should feel more part of Fiat’s history, Fiat will never be grateful enough for having created the Panda. I told him, look, it has nothing to do with it, I said that you destroyed the Republic, which is the truth. I didn’t talk about Fiat but about Repubblica which he bought because he was afraid Montezemolo would buy it.” No denial, for now, but we are in the phase of resentment and hatred, also because the Engineer reserved sugar and pepper for Gianni Agnelli «he was never an entrepreneur, he never wanted to manage Fiat, except as a representative, let it be clear that Fiat could not have had a better representative in the world than Agnelli but I remember that while chatting and making fun of himself a bit, he said, but look (the Lawyer addressed everyone as Lei, including Pininfarina and Romiti ed.) if I had I been given the task of managing a newsstand I would have been capable of making it go bankrupt”. And then the grand cinepanettone finale, pages of the best Piedmontese youth, the first meeting with Agnelli.
The incident allegedly happened at 11pm, at number 26 Corso Matteotti, in Turin, in the entrance hall of the Palazzo degli Agnelli, the one narrated in Vestiviamo alla marinara. Here the lords of Fiat had rented out, even before the war (at the time Corso Matteotti was called Corso Oporto), some accommodation to two tenants, and here, from Via Bertola, the family of Rodolfo De Benedetti had moved. His son Carlo, returning from an evening of studying at a friend’s house, was struck by the appearance not of Gianni Agnelli but of the fabulous woman at his side, Anita Ekberg. Data in hand, the Swedish actress had arrived in Italy in 1959, Agnelli was 38 years old, De Benedetti 25 but, faced with the almost dreamlike vision of the future Sylvia from Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the testosterone began to stir, the young man , already married to Mita Crosetti, almost fainted and here, the fantastic or imaginative story of the Engineer plays with the words, «…and I remain as if to say, you know, a boy in Turin, you find Anita Ekberg who it’s unthinkable and he says: go, go have a wank… I’ll remember it all my life, he gave me a suggestion.” I hope that the everlasting memory is reserved for the moment and not for the act perfidiously recommended by the Lawyer.
It is not known, nor did the Engineer want to go into the details of the subsequent episodes in that dark hallway but certainly the memory of the episode, in the absence of the protagonists, who have now passed on to a life that is no longer sweet, does not fall within the canons of fair play very dear to Carlo De Benedetti himself who once again got lost in the Swedish enchantment of that night in Turin.
