THE former president and CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) Australia, Steve Zanlunghi, has been appointed to a major regional role at the customer retention, training and sales events group Absolute Results.

Mr Zanlunghi, who left FCA Australia in August last year, is now director of operations – Asia-Pacific for the Canadian-based company which has been operating in Australia for the past five years.

Absolute Results consults and deploys trainers to work in more than 2000 unique dealer showrooms in 19 countries each year.

By mining dealers’ databases as the basis for sales events and training sales staff in the lead-up to the events, Absolute Results helped 295 dealers sell 5181 vehicles at sales events in Australia last year and worked with 23 different OEMs.

Mr Zanlunghi has joined Absolute Results after a 22-year career with FCA where in addition to leading the car-maker’s Australian operations he was also head of Jeep for the Asia-Pacific region.

Mr Zanlunghi , an Australian national, moved to Australia from his role as FCA UK managing director and head of the Jeep brand for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Mr Zanlunghi started his career with Chrysler in 1997 working in the call centre in New York and Auburn Hills, Michigan, before rising to positions including dealer operations manager in Hawaii and San Francisco.

In 2006 he took the role of national sales operations manager for Chrysler in the United States and rose to regional managing director for the mid-Atlantic region in early 2010.

Two years later he shifted to Turin, Italy, for a brief stint heading up sales and commercial operations for Western Europe, but soon headed for the UK where he landed the role of CEO and managing director for Fiat Group Automobiles UK and chairman of Fiat Group Ireland.

He took responsibility for the Jeep brand in EMEA in early 2015 and according to the company “developed the EMEA regional Jeep brand strategy, including product, sales, marketing and network development, while maintaining his responsibility for the UK and Irish markets”.

Mr Zanlunghi was born in New York but is an Australian national with his mother originating from Melbourne. He spent some time at school in Melbourne and in his many years at FCA had regularly returned to Australia.

By John Mellor