Vittorio Valletta (28 July 1883 – 10 August 1967) was an Italian industrialist and president of Fiat S.p.A. from 1946 to 1966. Early life Born at Sampierdarena near Genoa, he was the son of Federico Valletta, of Brindisi origin (Palermo, 1856 – Turin, 1915), an officer of the Italian Royal Army and later an official in Turin of the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane. His mother was Teresa Quadrio from Valtellina who belonged to a family of minor nobility; a prominent exponent of this family was the patriot Maurizio Quadrio. Valletta was a lecturer in economics before he joined Fiat in April 1921. As a result of his academic qualifications and background he was often known to colleagues and in the trade as "The Professor" (Il Professore). Giovanni Agnelli, the company's founder, sought him as accountant. Valletta was known to the Italian fascist regime for his social democratic ideas, membership in Freemasonry, and clandestine connections with exiled anti-fascists in France, including the future president of the Italian Republic, Giuseppe Saragat, of whom he shared his reformist socialist views and was politically close to his post-war Italian Democratic Socialist Party. Career Valletta became Fiat director in 1928 and the company's CEO in 1939. In the upheavals that followed the collapse of Benito Mussolini's fascist regime, Valletta found himself expelled from the company by the powerful trade unions that considered that he had been sympathetic to the National Fascist Party regime; he was later acquitted. While they shared mutual benefits in the field of war orders, Fiat always maintained a line of independence from the Fascist regime's totalitarian aspirations. In his work about the Italian resistance, Sergio Favretto's book argues that Fiat was actively involved alongside the resistance; the company supplied vehicles and petrol, made large sums available to support the movement, and collaborated in the sabotage of war production in its own plants. In 1946, amid difficulties in the company's decision-making, Valletta was recalled and nominated as the company's president. He presided during two decades of the Italian economic miracle and rapid expansion as small Fiats proliferated on Italian streets, and he lived out the injunction of Agnelli to "make Fiat greater, giving more working opportunities to the people, and producing better and cheaper cars." Valletta wanted to bring American technology to Mirafiori and ensure that every Italian could buy a car, starting with the Turin workers, whom he described as "excellent,