As long as it existed, it was Milan. Alfa Romeo’s first electric SUV changes name due to… cheese problem

Alfa Romeo’s first all-electric car has sparked controversy ever since it became official just a few days ago. It’s been less than a week since the Alfa Romeo Milano was presented to the public. A small electric SUV with an aesthetic that caused a stir… and which is no longer called Milan.

That’s all that happened with the new… Alfa Romeo Junior.

What a mess. Partly, of course, within the Alfa Romeo brand they expected an increase in the resulting excitement. It doesn’t cost less. Alfa Romeo, which has always had a clear sporting bent, presented its first fully electric car. Which at that time was called Alfa Romeo Milano.

And the reaction among fans closest to the brand was immediate. For them, it is almost a betrayal that Alfa Romeo already has a fully electric car in its lineup. We might think it’s a matter of the times we live in, but beyond that, this is a city SUV whose aesthetics have left fans very cold.

This is not my Alpha. This is something that Alfa Romeo has long been criticized for. The brand was distinguished by a clear sporting vocation, as well as a risky and very original design, which at first glance made it clear what kind of brand we were looking at.

But numbers are numbers, and the Italians had to redirect their product to a wider group of potential customers. The Giulia seemed to remember the Alfa Romeos of yesteryear (it returned to rear-wheel drive, among other things), but some had already ripped their clothes off the Alfa Romeo Stelvio, its first SUV. Then comes the Alfa Romeo Tonale, which has had a poor showing.

Loss of identity. Guillermo Garcia Alfonsin explained it well in a YouTube video about the Citroën C6. Alfa Romeo is a brand similar to DS. Seeks to position itself in the market bonus sell their products higher than the generalists. And, without a doubt, this market niche has long since shrunk to such an extent that it has practically disappeared.

Over time, the buyer began to pay more attention to the brand than to the car itself. For brands with smaller sales volumes, this became a problem: buyers preferred the German trio of Audi, BMW and Mercedes.

This made the profitability of their products minimal. With less money, they have to share more elements with the rest of the models in their group (in this case, both from Stellantis) to avoid losing money. Without the technical and design solutions that made them different, the customer has less reason to buy and things get worse in a vicious cycle in which both companies keep losing.

We started off on the wrong foot. Given this panorama, Alfa Romeo had a difficult task: to make its first electric car, which is also an urban SUV, attractive. Of course, this doesn’t seem like an easy mission for a company that has spent most of its history based on coupe sedans with unusual behavior and design.

In addition, the Italian company has to share the platform with several cars in order to save money. To make it distinctive, Alfa Romeo has opted for a more aggressive design than the Opel Mokka, Peugeot 2008, Jeep Avenger or Fiat 600. Something that doesn’t really fit in with the more organic traditions and flowing shapes that are usually liked Alfists and that we fell in love with the Alfa Romeo Stradale. And it was armed.

Because, in addition to the fact that some of them share many of the shortcomings with previous models, some see them as new ones. Milan The younger Renault (its designer Alejandro Mesonero-Romanos worked until 2021 for the French company) and the classic central triangular radiator grille, on which is engraved a red cross (the symbol of the city of Milan) and a snake devouring the car. (from the Visconti family coat of arms) representing the company were not liked.

“I’m not Milano, I’m Junior”. For example, when Chiketete declared at an event with children: “I am not the Wizard King, I am a singer named Chiketete,” we were surprised by the press release from Fiat in an email. “The name is Milano, right? Junior, then, was the headline information from the Italian company.”

Information provided by the brand explains that the Milano name refers to the company’s origins and that it was chosen as a tribute (by the fans themselves) now that the brand is taking a new step towards electrification. Something of a return to basics. But with a few weeks to go, the Italian government confirmed to the brand that they could not use the name for legal reasons.

Alfa Romeo, which says it can be confident in using the name, has decided to change it to Junior, a commercial name that was already used in the 60s on cars with a more youthful approach.

Italian DNA. Although Alfa Romeo always boasts of its Italian stamp as a purchase price, the truth is that the Alfa Romeo (now) Junior is made in Poland. And the government has forced the company to understand that a product that is not made in Italy cannot use a name that causes confusion and might indicate to the buyer that it was produced within its borders.

The reason for the adoption of this law was Italy’s national protection of Grana Paddano cheese. To prevent companies based in other countries from using a country’s name or references to its cities to attach value to a product that was produced outside their borders and therefore did not comply with designation of origin rules, they approved this regulation.

Not the first time. Generally, this law was used to prevent the sale of foreign goods within Italian territory, creating confusion as to their true origin, but measures were even taken against products produced or processed and distributed outside Italy. This is, for example, the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union against a French company in the early 2000s.

In this scenario, Alfa Romeo would be able to sell its electric SUV under the Milano brand outside of Italy and select the Junior exclusively within its borders. However, this requires commercial efforts, probably won’t compensate taking into account that, in addition, Alfa Romeo is expected to sell the most electric vehicles in Italy.

Image | Alfa Romeo and Wikimedia

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