Alfa Romeo has changed the name of its new compact urban SUV after an Italian government official declared that the use of the name ‘Milano’ is banned by law.

The name ‘Milano’ was chosen to pay tribute to the city where Alfa Romeo’s history began in 1910.

Alfa Romeo has decided to change the name from ‘Milano’ to ‘Junior,’ as a nod to the 1966 GT Junior.

We are perfectly aware that this moment 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 name Alfa Romeo Junior is completely natural, as it is strongly linked to the history of the Brand and has been among our favorites and among the public’s favorites since the beginning. As a team, we are choosing once again to share our passion for the Brand and make the product and our customers the priority. 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.

Said Jean-Philippe Imparato – CEO Alfa Romeo