• The Fiat Programme.
Page 16
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How the Turin Factory's 40,000 Workpeople will be Employed.
Excluding tyres, the Fiat factory now manufactures 09 per cent, of its product in its own shops, and, again excluding tyres, in a very short time the 100 per cent. basis will-be reached. All the electrical appliances and accessories, such as speedometer, clocks, horns, jacks, etc., are made under the. common roof, which tendency is extremely interesting in con. trast to that prevailing in America, where the maker of components, and particularly the maker of accessories, semis to hold his own.
The chief mechanical change in the Fiat engine is the adoption of detachable cylinder heads. It has been found that higher engine efficiency can be obtained
Ba5 from completely machining the combustion chamber.
Saving of weight has been aimed at, and as much as 25 per cent. economy hi metal has been obtained in the entire chassis. Some of this weight reduction is due to higher engine efficiency, and much to the special alloy steels only exceptionally employed before the war but now in common use, whilst a certain percentage of saving is due to better designing. All of this .spells economy in running costs.
Commercial motor vehicles will form a separate and distinct branch in Fiat production. During hostilities the output is claimed to have attained 100 vehicles per
day, and it is also claimed that, this quantity production is proof of the suitability of the Fiat lorries under extreme war conditions, but, peace and war requirements being so different, new commercial vehicles will be put on the market as ROOD as the army needs hare been met. We have already described the Fiat agricultural tractor. A special department has been established to produce these tractors, which ought to be, to a large measure, suitable for agricultural work in this country, because the soil of Italy is very heavy and hard ; it is also heavy in this country, whereas the soil of America, for which the American treetor is mainly suitable, is light.