From Auris to Corolla and from Gingo to Panda
That was a shock last week: the Alfa Romeo Milano, which had already been announced and presented as such, will be called Alfa Romeo Junior after all. A very unusual emergency measure, but this sudden name change is not unique. In fact, Alfa itself has already fallen into the Milano trap!
Was it a marketing stunt? That rumor is circulating in the comments under the news item about the Alfa Romeo Junior, but we still dare to doubt it. After all, we were there when the Milano was unveiled and saw how much Alfa organized the entire introduction of this important new model around the connection with the city of Milan, Alfa’s birthplace. Everything during the presentation revolved around this theme. The fact that the car would not be built in Milan or even in Italy was of course concealed where possible. A little later, Alfa Romeo was told: products with a name that clearly refers to Italy must be built in Italy. That is why the little Alfa is now called Junior, a historically sound, but perhaps less appealing name.
Believe it or not, Alfa fell into the Milano trap for the second time. The Giulietta, launched in 2009, was also going to be called Milano until the very end, but was suddenly given a different name a month before its launch. The reason seems suspiciously similar to the cause of the latest Milano riot: Alfa was at the time heavily reducing the number of workplaces at its home base in Milan, so the name Milano offended (former) employees there.
Alfa’s sister brand Fiat can also do something about it. In 2003 there was a long-awaited new model at the Geneva Motor Show, the Fiat Gingo. Renault objected because of the similarity with ‘Twingo’ and that explains why we have known the five-door A-segment car as Panda for decades.
Toyota
‘Typical Italian, such bumbling’, we hear skeptics thinking. Nothing turns out to be further from the truth, because the very sensible Toyota pulled off almost exactly the same stunt not so long ago. The current Corolla was in Geneva in 2018 as the new Auris. Just like with the Milano/Junior, the type plates were already attached and we even made a video with the ‘old’ name. At the very last minute, Toyota decided to equalize the name for the compact model worldwide and the iconic ‘Corolla’ was also given a place on the price list in Europe.
There are more examples of sudden name changes. A well-known example is the Porsche 901, which was ‘just’ called 911 due to Peugeot’s claim to the three-digit type designation with a 0 in the middle. The Mitsubishi Mirage is on a completely different level. The compact Mitsubishi is called that almost all over the world, but due to problems with trademark rights in Europe it has to be known as Space Star. Do you know more examples? Let me know!
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl