Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s crusade to defend Italian excellence from the destructive side of globalisation has won a small but symbolic victory.
Global car colossus Stellantis, which owns Alfa Romeo, has bowed to pressure from Italy’s right-wing government and changed the name of its new SUV, less than a week after its launch.
Given the potentially huge expense involved in changing the name of a car – plus damage to the manufacturer’s image – such a volte face is said to be unprecedented.
‘Never before’ has a car manufacturer changed the name of a car in response to a political storm claimed Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy’s business daily.
That the car in question is Alfa Romeo’s first fully electric vehicle (EV), and thus of pivotal strategic importance, makes such a name change even more dramatic.
The car was launched last week in Milan amidst much fanfare, as the ‘Alfa Romeo Milano’. Just five days later Stellantis renamed the new 4×4 the ‘Alfa Romeo Junior’.
The name ‘Milano’ falsely gave the impression – the Meloni government had argued – that the vehicle is being made in Milan where Alfa Romeo was founded in 1910. But in reality the car is being made in the Polish city of Tychy.
Alfa Romeo was taken over by Turin-based Fiat in 1986. Its current owner, Stellantis, the world’s fourth largest car maker, was formed in 2021 from the merger of Italian-American Fiat-Chrysler and the French PSA Group which owned Peugeot, Citroen and Vauxhall. The former owners of Fiat – the Agnelli family – are the largest shareholder in Stellantis but its headquarters are in Holland not Italy.
Meloni has consistently criticised the Agnellis for their perceived disloyalty to their country. In January, she accused them of handing over Fiat to the French and moving its fiscal and legal headquarters from Italy abroad.
What prompted the name change was a remark by Adolfo Urso, minister for business, that it was illegal to call the vehicle the Alfa Romeo Milano as it is made in Tychy not in Milan.
Urso cited a 2003 Italian law – known as ‘La Legge Italian Sounding’ – that makes it a criminal offence for companies to deceive the public about where products on sale in Italy are made.
He said: ‘Therefore a car called Milano must be produced in Italy, otherwise you give a fallacious impression that’s not permitted by Italian law.’
Typically the 2003 law has been used to protect Italian food products, most notably parmesan cheese, from foreign-made imitations. Such products are also protected by EU law as ‘geographical indications’ which means that names such as ‘parmigiano Reggiano’ can only be used to describe parmesan cheese from the Emilia-Romagna region around the cities of Parma, Reggio Emilia and Modena.
Cars, of course, are a different kettle of fish. Nevertheless, if the aim is not to deceive the public about where it is made then surely the car should not even be called an Alfa Romeo, give that it is Made in Poland. But no one in the Meloni government seems bothered about that.
The initial reaction from Carlos Tavares, the chief executive officer of Stellantis, was defiant. He said that there was no reason to believe that calling the car the Milano was illegal and that Italians who want it produced in Italy should face the reality: that would add €10,000 to the sale price of €41,500.
Yet within days he agreed to change the car’s name.
Jean-Philippe Imparato, Alfa Romeo’s chief executive officer, told a press conference: ‘We’re deciding to change [the name], despite knowing that we’re not obliged to do so, because we want to preserve the position emotions that our products have always created and to avoid any kind of political row.’
Alfa Romeo team are working ‘belly down’ to refocus the brand’s marketing and communication strategy for the new Junior (named after the company’s classic 1966 sports car).
The name ‘Milano’ had been chosen ‘in homage’ to the city where Alfa Romeo was born, he said, and that the car is made in Poland is clearly stated in its vehicle identification number. Lots of cars are named after cities or places in countries different from those in which they are made, he added, such as the Nissan Murano and the Hyundai Santa Fe. Nor let us not forget, I would add, the legendary Fords: the Capri and the Cortina.
Imparato also said that even though the car’s original name was known as far back as December there had been no complaint from the government until last week’s launch.
The explanation for this is not hard to pin down. The row over the name of this Alfa Romeo is part of an on-going, often acrimonious tussle between the Italian government and Stellantis.
At its peak in 1989, Italian car production in Italy was about two million cars a year. Meloni is determined to increase production from the current 700,000 a year to at least one million. She has argued: ‘If you want to sell a car on the world market publicising that car as an Italian jewel well then that car must be produced in Italy.’
Stellantis is considering the production of up to 150,000 low cost EVs a year in Italy with its Chinese partner Leapmotor. But it says this can only happen if the government hands over far higher state subsidies, especially to encourage people to buy EVs.
Meanwhile, Urso is talking to another Chinese car maker, Dongfeng – he confirmed this week – despite Meloni’s decision in December to pull Italy out of China’s controversial belt and road initiative.
As Urso put it: ‘To sustain the system it’s absolutely necessary to reach 1.4 million vehicles (a year). If Stellantis believes it can achieve this, great, otherwise it’s obvious there’ll be space for another, or other, automobile companies. Italy is the only case in Europe where there’s only one car manufacturer and it’s unable to meet the needs of the internal market. It’s an anomaly that must be sorted out.’
There are many positive sides to globalisation but it is difficult to avoid thinking that every fight against its negative sides is one step forward, two steps back.
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