«We are sure that this will calm everyone’s minds and we believe that the name Milan is not misleading nor, much less, outlawed», says CEO Learned in response to Minister Urso
A sensational choice in response to the controversies of recent days. «Alfa Romeo Milano changes its name, it will be called Junior – declares Jean-Philippe Learnato, CEO of Alfa Romeo. We are sure that this will calm everyone’s minds and we believe that the name Milan is not misleading nor, much less, outlawed.”
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 December 13th and the ministry was aware of it: «Nobody told us anything, the controversy arose the day after the presentation. Very strange”.
Alfa Romeo will not proceed legally against the Government for damage to its image. The response from Adolfo Urso, Minister of Business and Made in Italy, was immediate: «I think it is good news, which arrives precisely on Made in Italy day which enhances work, enterprise, the typicality and peculiarity of the Italian product which 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 in recent days to our new sports compact is something unique, with 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»
Alfa Romeo’s compact SUV 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, 5.47pm – Updated April 15, 2024, 9.09pm
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2024-04-15 19:09:00
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