in 1997. In 1999, Morgan Grenfell Private Equity acquired Piaggio. Weapons Fiat built artillery tractors for the French and Italian armies in World War I. Società Anonima Fabbrica Armi Torino (SAFAT) was a wholly owned subsidiary of FIAT in the 1930s, designing and manufacturing weapons for the Italian armed forces. After losing a competition to produce a series of new machine-guns for the Regia Aeronautica, SAFAT was sold to the winning competitor – Società Italiana Ernesto Breda, forming Breda-SAFAT. Rail transport Fiat Ferroviaria's history goes back to before World War II, when Fiat provided motive power used for both Diesel and electric locomotives and railcars (littorine) not only in Italy, but other parts of Europe, and in South America. Fiat produced, among the rest, the successful Pendolino tilting trains, the first working prototype four-car set being run in the mid-1970s. Fiat Ferroviaria was later sold to Alstom in 2000. Recreation The Fiat Group owned the Sestriere skiing facilities; the village in the Alps is a creation of the Agnelli family. The Sestriere skiing facilities were sold by the group in 2006. Enterprises outside Italy See list of Fiat Group assembly sites Fiat was a key player in developing motor industries for a number of countries from the 1950s, particularly in Eastern Europe, Spain, Egypt, Ethiopia and Turkey. The AutoVAZ state works Lada products in Tolyatti (Togliatti), Russia, were Fiat based, as were SEAT products of Spain. Lada is now controlled by Renault, and SEAT by Volkswagen. A small number of Fiats were built in Bulgaria. Among Fiat's earliest foreign assembly plants was one in Poughkeepsie, New York, between 1910 and 1917. United States The American F.I.A.T. Automobile Company was founded by American licensees in 1909 as a response to 45 percent tariffs on imported automobiles. The plant was finished in the spring of 1910 and the first car rolled off the production line in September 1910; all Poughkeepsie Fiats were built with parts shipped from Italy although they usually received locally made bodywork by companies like Holbrook, Quinby, or Fleetwood. American F.I.A.T. focused on the larger and more luxurious end of the range, with the smaller Types 51 and 52 (Tipo 1 and 2) only available to order as fully built-up imports. The first model offered was the Type 54, corresponding to the European Tipo 4. This has a four-cylinder engine (itself called "Tipo 54A") and rode on a wheelbase;