A sensational choice in response to the controversies of recent days. «Alfa Romeo Milano changes name, it will be called Junior — declares Jean-Philippeprendito, CEO of Alfa Romeo. We are sure that this will calm everyone’s minds we believe that the name Milan is neither misleading nor illegal».
A choice also dictated by sales: «Controversies make us lose sales, we move forward and we are not interested in all this».
The decision to call the car Milan was taken on 13 December and the ministry was aware of it: «No one told us anything, the controversies arose the day after the presentation. Very strange».
Alfa Romeo will not proceed legally against the Government for damage to its image. Adolfo Urso’s response was immediateMinister of Business and Made in Italy: «I think it’s good newswhich arrives precisely on the day of Made in Italy which enhances the work, the enterprise, the typicality and the peculiarity of the Italian product that everyone envies us in the world”.
“We weren’t forced to change”
«We are aware that this episode 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 new name Junior is completely natural, being strongly linked to the history of the brand and having been among our favorites and among the public’s favorites from the beginning — continues Learned. As a team we choose once again to make our passion available to the brand, to give priority to the product and customers. We decide to change, even though we know that we are not obliged to do so, because we want to preserve the positive emotions that our products have always generated and avoid any type of controversy. The attention paid these days to our new sports compact is something uniquewith an unprecedented number of accesses to the online configurator, which caused the website to crash for a few hours.”
The Minister’s statements
The decision comes following the declarations of Adolfo Urso, Minister of Business and Made in Italy who on 11 April declared: «A car called Milano cannot be produced in Poland. This is prohibited by the Italian law which in 2003 defined Italian Sounding, a law which provides that information must not be given that mislead the consumer.”
«They would be fallacious indications explicitly linked to geographical indications. Therefore a car called Milano must be produced in Italy, otherwise a false indication is given which is not permitted by Italian law”, added Urso.
«We will carefully evaluate decisions for the future»
The compact SUV from Alfa Romeo it will be called Junior in all markets where it will be sold. «Today we received the green light to use the Junior name without any constraints. We will make our industrial plan guided by two considerations: competitiveness and our customers. Stelvio and Giulia will be done in 2025 and 2026 in Cassino, we’ll see in the future.”
April 15, 2024 (modified April 15, 2024 | 6:43 pm)
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