Alfa Romeo has renamed its newest small SUV Milano to Junior following rising pressure from the Italian government. Alfa Romeo reveals that the original name met all the legal requirements but the Milano name was deemed banned by law as per a certain Italian government individual.
It is interesting to know why the name was banned in the first place. Adolfo Urso, Italy’s industry minister, criticised Alfa Romeo for naming its newest SUV with an Italian name while its origin is foreign. The Alfa Romeo Milano, now Junior, is manufactured in Alfa’s Tychy assembly plant, located in Poland. In the words of Urso, “A car called Milano cannot be produced in Poland, this is forbidden by Italian law”.
Alfa Romeo decided the name of its latest SUV via public voting and the Milano name was selected. Soon after the name was announced, the Italian government decided to protest against the name and asked Alfa Romeo to rename it. As a result, the Italian carmaker changed the name from Milano to Junior in the spirit of promoting mutual understanding.
Alfa Romeo also thanked the public and dealer network for the positive feedback, and journalists for the same. Upon announcing the new name, Jean-Philippe Imparato – CEO Alfa Romeo said, “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. The choice of the name Junior is completely natural, as it is strongly linked to the history of the brand and has been among our favourites and among the public’s favourites since the beginning.”
He also added, “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 of hours.” The chaos around the name has certainly given the new SUV a lot more attention than what Alfa Romeo had anticipated. This also explains the cause behind the website crashing for a couple of hours as visitors flooded the online portal.