[Viffermike]

There are just some things the Italians do horribly, and other things the Italians do really, really well.

It's largely cultural: How manufacturing is defined and approached, how business is accomplished, how its citizens accept homegrown products into daily life. Italy has been, in many ways, a mess since World War Two because it culturally can't reconcile many fundamental differences between old-world and new-world economies of scale. Part of this is political. But a ton of it is cultural, especially relating to the value of the available skills of the labor force.

Simply put, no Western country places more value on skilled laborers than Italy does. The problem is that those skills are often not valued outside of the culture -- and when they are, it's at such a rarefied level -- fashion, textiles, and winemaking are three great examples -- that it's not translatable on a large-enough scale to matter to the economy as a whole. Another problem is that economic leadership frequently comes from leaders in these skilled fields. That does little to nothing to help the country progress.

There are entities that have overcome this bias in Italy -- Luxottica (eyewear), Mark Bass (pro music equipment), Aprilia (motorbikes), and Fiat-Chrysler to an extent -- but even that latter example has 'special' qualities that are very, well, Italian. The country is at a major crossroads with this issue because the EU has exposed (and covered for) many of those weaknesses, and the country is increasingly anti-immigration while basically refusing to attempt to convert its active and emerging labor forces. Until some of it shifts, Italian manufacturing quality -- whether in-country or outside of it -- won't improve overall.