Less than a week after it was first introduced, Alfa Romeo’s all-new Milano electric crossover has been hastily renamed ‘Junior’.
The Milano is built at Alfa’s Tychy assembly plant in Poland alongside the Jeep Avenger and Fiat 600e with which the Milano shares a platform, and is the first Alfa Romeo model entirely produced outside Italy.
“A car called Milano cannot be produced in Poland. This is forbidden by Italian law,” said in Turin Adolfo Urso, Italy’s industry minister.
“During one of the most important weeks for Alfa Romeo’s future, an Italian government official declared that the use of the name Milano – chosen by the Brand for its recently unveiled new compact sports car – is banned by law,” Alfa said in a statement.
“Despite Alfa Romeo believing that the name met all legal requirements and that there are issues much more important than the name of a new car, Alfa Romeo has decided to change it from Milano to Alfa Romeo Junior in the spirit of promoting mutual understanding. With a unique story and an endless list of names to choose from, the name change was not an issue. Indeed, it was a pleasure to go over the list of names selected as favorites from the public’s suggestions, one of which was Alfa Romeo Junior,” Alfa said.
The name “Milano,” a public favorite, was chosen to pay tribute to the city where Alfa Romeo was founded in 1910.
This was not the first time that Alfa Romeo has asked the public’s opinion when choosing the name of a car. It was previously done in 1966 with the Spider 1600 when the name chosen by the public was Duetto.
“We are perfectly aware that this moment will remain engraved in the history of the Brand. It’s a great responsibility but at the same time it’s an exciting moment, Jean-Philippe Imparato, CEO of Alfa Romeo said in a statement.
“The choice of the name Alfa Romeo Junior is completely natural, as it is strongly linked to the history of the Brand and has been among our favorites and among the public’s favorites since the beginning. As a team, we are choosing once again to share our passion for the Brand and make the product and our customers the priority. We decided to change the name, even though we know that we are not required to do so, because we want to preserve the positive emotion that our products have always generated and avoid any type of controversy. The attention to our new sports compact that we’ve received the past few days is quite exciting as we had an unprecedented number of visits to the online configurator, causing the website to crash for a couple hours.”
