A FEW months ago, well before he began writing this week's cover story on Italian Automaker Gianni Agnelli, Contributing Editor Timothy James decided that he needed an automobile. After careful comparison shopping, he chose one of Agnelli's Fiats. Now that he has spent long hours studying Agnelli's operations, James is more convinced than ever that he made a wise choice. He even persuaded Business Editor Marshall Loeb to leave his own work on the cover story long enough to investigate his Fiat's fine points at firsthand. The next day James' car failed to start, and he was late to work. "After all the time and trouble I've spent on Agnelli recently," says James ruefully, "it was rather an injustice."

No such troubles plagued the members of TIME'S Rome bureau as they traveled across Italy, assessing the impact of Agnelli and his fellow industrialists on every aspect of Italian life. Bureau Chief James Bell, who concentrated on the man who is known to his countrymen as "Numero Uno," was surprised by the utter plainness of Agnelli's office above his factory in Turin. To Bell, it was "the sort of place you might expect the smelter superintendent of a Montana copper mine to have." Then the interview moved to Agnelli's chalet on the top of Turin's highest hill, 1,200 ft. above the city. "The breathtaking view of the snowcapped Alps taking up half the horizon," said Bell, "more than made up for the spartan factory quarters."

Rome Correspondent John Shaw, who has been covering Italian politics and social developments for the past year, brought to his files a background based on hundreds of interviews -- with academicians, journalists, sociologists, politicians. Correspondent Wilton Wynn, who has been specializing in Italian business stories for the past six years, was well prepared to document the development of the economy and the emergence of a particularly gifted generation of government economists and businessmen.

One of the familiar features of yesterday's TIME style was compound words: cinemactor, radiorator, nudancer. Writers delighted in rustling them up; readers found them by turns fascinating and irritating. Although these coinages still frequently appear in parodies of TIME style, they have disappeared from our columns. But every now and then the old urge still takes hold. For the latest contribution, see TIME ESSAY.

The Cover: Acrylic on steel, by Louis Glanzman.

Artist Glanzman, who has done a variety of TIME covers in a variety of styles and media, used raw textured silk and leather as a background for his unusual composition. "I painted the head on steel," he says, "to represent Fiat. The silk and leather represent Italian industries."

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