Less than a week on from its 10 April 2024 reveal, Alfa Romeo has confirmed that it is changing the name of its new compact SUV from Milano to Junior.

A press statement by the Stellantis-owned brand confirmed the reason for the change is entangled within the complexities of the Italian legal system, with a dash of politics added into the mix for good measure.

Despite Alfa Romeo announcing its intention to use the Milano name back in December 2023, a moniker it has used previously which also celebrates the marque’s origins, the legal point centres on the fact the newcomer isn’t due to be built in Milan at all – or anywhere else in Italy, for that matter – but Tychy in Poland.

When production of TAFKAM (the automobile formally known as Milano) begins alongside its Fiat 600 and Jeep Avenger cousins, it will leave the factory wearing Alfa Romeo Junior badges.

Junior hardly sounds Italian…

It doesn’t, no, but interestingly Alfa has a greater legacy of using the Junior name on its less expensive models than it has of employing the Milano tag, so it’s an appropriate fit for what will be the smallest model in the line-up.

In the UK, TAFKAM’s arrival will mark the first occasion Alfa Romeo has used Junior for a standalone model range, rather than as derivative-level distinguisher.

Even so, it’s an unfortunate development, isn’t it?

From a PR perspective, the company has acted swiftly to own the issue and announce what the solution is. That’s the best course of action.

It’s not unusual for second- and third-choice names for new models to be held in reserve ‘just in case’, so that the switch to Junior has been made so quickly isn’t unusual, but inevitably there will be some smoothing over to do with the retail network and specialist media which had covered the Milano’s very recent launch.

Ensuring the message is rapidly spread far and wide that Milano is now Junior is imperative – and for website editors, tweaking their content and squeezing their SEO juice to reflect the change is already underway.

Has this kind of thing happened before?

While the exact circumstances behind this swap appear peculiar to this instance, Alfa Romeo isn’t the first car manufacturer to be forced to rename a new model before it goes on sale, nor will it be the last.

There’ll be scope for a much deeper dive into previous examples of pre-sales name changes in future posts, but as appetite-whetters see if you recall these:

Fiat’s Panda Gingo bingo

At the 2003 Geneva motor show Fiat revealed its new Panda-replacing city car was to be called Gingo. After all, the newbie was so different from the Panda it replaced, it deserved a fresh, unrelated badge.

That was until the summer when it became clear Renault wasn’t amused that Gingo sounded far too close to its own similarly sized Twingo model.

Fiat’s solution? Call it Panda after all.

Volvo: WTF40?

Back in 1995, Volvo proudly announced a new naming convention for future models, where S (for saloon or sedan), F (representing the flexibility of estates and hatchbacks) and C (denoting a coupe or convertible) would be paired with a single digit numeral indicating the approximate size of the car.

First to be confirmed were the saloon and estate developed in conjunction with Mitsubishi, set to be known as S4 and F4. Audi soon got upset at the news as it had been using S4 on its hot 100 models for a while and intended to switch the name over to punchier versions of its A4 range.

Volvo’s elegantly simple solution was to stick a zero on the end, renaming the pair S40 and F40, but that was after the first wave of sales brochures had been issued referring to the saloon as the S4.

Even more problematic, one of Ferrari’s most iconic models had also used the F40 name, so it was unsurprising that communications between Italy and Sweden went along the lines of ‘that won’t be happening’.

Ahh! Rapidly, a further tweak was ushered in: the F for flexibility gave way to the V for versatility and the V40 label came into being.

Peugeot pokes Porsche

The subtly evolving silhouette of Porsche’s sports car mainstay is as iconic as its 911 name, but Plan A didn’t involve it being called 911 at all.

When it was revealed at the 1963 Frankfurt motor show as a forward-looking replacement for the 356, Porsche referred to it as the 901.

This irked Peugeot – not because it was intending to launch a model called 901 itself, but because it had already trademarked all three-digit number combinations with a central zero – a significant chunk of which it has subsequently used. Porsche’s fix was to replace the zero with a one, and the neun-elf legend was born.

Any others you can think of? Add them in the comments below.