FIAT used to sell a rear bumper sticker for its Multipla people carrier. "Wait until you see the front," it said. The trouble was, when people followed the instruction, not enough of them liked what they saw. The Multipla was rightly hailed by motoring journalists as an innovative midi-sized people carrier that was fun to drive and incredibly practical.

Unfortunately for Fiat, it also looked rather stupid. The twin-tier bonnet with lights set just below the windscreen wipers was incredibly ugly. Fiat's adventurous styling meant that too few buyers saw past the exterior of a car that should have been a class leader. Instead, the Multipla was a flop.

The car neatly sums up Fiat's uncanny knack of shooting itself in the foot. It is an ability that has seen the marque slip from the second most successful European manufacturer at the beginning of the 1990s to last position - excepting MG Rover, which is now too small to register as a serious mass-market manuf- acturer.

The company balance sheet has been awash with red ink in recent years. Losses topped a crippling £3.5bn in 2002.

Thankfully for the Italian economy, there is much more to Fiat than cars.

The 105-year-old business is incredibly diverse, with wide ranging interests that stretch from newspapers to robots. It employs tens of thousands of people and still contributes almost five per cent of Italy's GDP.

For all that, Fiat remains an automobile company at heart.

And critics of the car range say Fiat has lacked ambition and judgement since the halcyon days of the Uno, Punto and Tipo models. They claim the company has relied too much on the loyalty of buyers in its home market and failed to offer new models that stood out from the opposition.

In recent years Fiat has grown worryingly dependent on the success of one model. The Punto supermini commands a 30 per cent slice of its domestic market; it also sells very well in other markets across Europe.

But, as was once said of the BL Mini: "Small cars usually mean small profits."

Even worse, the traditional Italian small car has come under ferocious pressure from foreign competitors, in particular, Korean companies. Vehicles such as the Hyundai Atoz, and the Daewoo Matiz may not match the Punto for driving dynamics but they put Fiat's other city car, the ageing Seicento, to shame.

Fiat has responded by designing and launching a small car - the Panda - in record time, but this currently sits above the Seicento in the UK range and costs considerably more.

More importantly, Fiat has yet to come up with a convincing car in the Focus/Mondeo classes where the real money is to be made. In fact, one could argue that the company's current problems stem from the replacement for the Brava/Bravo twins - the Stilo - failing to find favour with Golf/Focus buyers.

The car that competed in the next class up - the unloved Marea - was based on a smaller car, it used the Brava floorpan, and flopped so badly that it is no longer on sale in this country.

Faced with crippling losses and talk of a takeover by General Motors (GM bought a 20 per cent stake in Fiat some time ago and the deal included an option to buy in 2004) the company has elected to fight back with new models.

Indeed, the GM link has proven fruitful in this regard. New Vauxhalls will soon be powered by Fiat diesels and the next generation Corsa/Punto will have much in common.

At the Geneva Motor Show earlier this month the group's new CEO, Austrian Herbert Demel, committed the company to launching 14 models (including Alfa Romeo and Lancias) by 2006. This includes three Panda offspring and a mini- MPV.

More bullishly, he predicted the Italian carmaker would also break even next year.

And what of the Multipla, the unfairly ignored MPV?

In a belated flash of pragmatism, the car returns later this year with a far better looking and, it must be said, far more conventional, appearance.