Major car brand changes name of new EV after pressure from Italian government
A MAJOR car brand has changed the name of its upcoming new EV after a row with the Italian government over its authenticity.
The company claimed it had made the change to “promote mutual understanding” and denied allegations from ministers that the original name broke the law.
Alfa Romeo, which is headquartered in Turin, Italy, was originally set to call the new model the Milano.
However, the announcement prompted a fierce backlash in the brand’s home country, particularly from the nationalist government which claims it violated an obscure piece of legislation.
The issue comes down to the fact that the motor will be the first manufactured by Alfa outside of Italy, with production having been moved to a plant in Poland.
Under Italian law, it is forbidden to represent products made outside the country as coming from there.
This is most often applied to food items, like Parmigiano cheese (called parmesan when produced elsewhere), but can cover all types of products.
Adolfo Urso, Minister for Business and Trade in the Meloni government, hit out at the proposed Milano name, alleging it was “misleading”.
He claimed: “A car called Milano cannot be produced in Poland. This is forbidden by Italian law.
“This law stipulates that you cannot give indications that mislead consumers.
“So a car called Milano must be produced in Italy.
“Otherwise, it gives a misleading indication which is not allowed under Italian law.”
Alfa has strongly denied the claims that they were not complying with the law, but has “decided” to change the name anyway.
The model will now be called the Junior instead as a callback to the beloved GT 1300 Junior first released in 1966.
An official statement from the brand read: “Despite Alfa Romeo believing that the name meets 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 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.
“It was a pleasure to go over the list of names selected as favourites from the public’s suggestions, one of which was Junior.”
The brand’s CEO Jean-Philippe Imparato added: “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.
“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.”