One of the oddest automotive naming stories has played out in the last week or so, with Alfa Romeo changing the name of its new baby crossover from Milano to Junior just five days after the car was revealed.
The hasty change came about as a result of pressure from the Italian government, which claimed the Polish-built Milano violated a law preventing products with names that reference Italian places from being built outside of the country. Alfa is adamant it was within its rights to call the car Milano, but has changed it to avoid further controversy.
This isn’t the first time a car has undergone a rapid name change, though. There have been a number of other cases, through negative reception, public pressure or actual legal threats. These are some of our favourites.
Aston Martin Vantage GT12
Aston Martin Vantage GT12
Introduced in 2015, the Vantage GT12 was a hardcore, track-biased version of the gorgeous previous-gen Aston Martin V12 Vantage. It was originally going to be called the Vantage GT3, as a nod to the platform’s success in GT3 racing, but barely a month after it was unveiled, it seems Gaydon received a phone from some lawyers in Stuttgart, who politely pointed out that Porsche had been using the GT3 name for its own hardcore, track-biased versions of the 911 since 1999.
Porsche 911
Porsche 911
It’s a little ironic, however, that Porsche got so protective of a 911 model name, because the base car was never supposed to be called that. When the now-iconic sports car was unveiled at the 1963 Frankfurt Motor Show, it was called the 901. Indeed, the very first batch of cars – mostly factory demos – bore this name. Peugeot, however, claimed that it owned the automotive trademark on all three-digit numbers with a ‘0’ in the middle, so Porsche quickly replaced it with a ‘1’. Peugeot seemed to have forgotten its claim by the time Ferrari launched the Dino 308 a decade later.
GWM Ora 03
GWM Ora 03
This little electric hatch from China garnered a lot of attention when it arrived in the UK in 2023. This was partly due to its bubbly retro styling, and partly down to its name – Funky Cat. This name isn’t even directly lifted from the Chinese market – there, it’s called the Good Cat.
It just over half a year for GWM Ora to decide that Funky Cat was an equally hard sell in Europe, and it was renamed to the far less imaginative 03. GWM Ora plans to bring more cars to Europe, but given the Funky Cat flip-flop, we’re probably going to be denied the joys of the (we’re not kidding) Lightning Cat and Mecha Dragon. Shame.
Ferrari 150º Italia
Ferrari 150º Italia
Ferrari’s car for the 2011 Formula 1 season was all set to be called the F150, a reference to the 150th anniversary of Italian unification. Pretty quickly, however, Ford put up a legal challenge, pointing out that it had been selling a product called the F-150 for some time. It’s easy to see the confusion – Ferrari’s F150 was a car designed to race at the pinnacle of motorsport, and Ford’s was… a large pickup truck. Nonetheless, Ferrari relented and renamed the car the 150º Italia. That’s not a degrees symbol, by the way – it’s roughly equivalent to the ‘th’ suffix in English.
McLaren 12C
McLaren 12C
Considering it was the first product of the newly-formed McLaren Automotive, 2011’s McLaren MP4-12C was a hell of a debut. It won praise pretty much across the board but was often pulled up for being a little… clinical in the way it went about things. Perhaps this was best summed up in its name, which would have been a bit better suited to a product made by Zanussi or Lexmark than McLaren. Yes, it linked the car to the company’s F1 machinery, but still. McLaren clearly took this on board, dropping the ‘MP4-’ after around a year on sale.
Toyota GR86
Toyota GR86
Not long after it was revealed, and before its first, infamously tiny UK allocation went on sale, the Toyota GR86 underwent a small name change from… GR 86. Notice the difference? Toyota ditched the space in the name for one simple reason: search engine optimisation. Internet searches for ‘GR86’ would be much more focused on the car, as the space would cause search engines to pull up unrelated results containing the individual terms ‘GR’ and ‘86’. To be honest, it probably could have been called the ‘Toyota Dog Turd’ and it still would have sold out in an instant.
Alfa Romeo Giulietta
Alfa Romeo Giulietta
Back in 2010, Alfa Romeo was getting ready to unveil its new small family car, the car that would push sales volume and help turn around its fortunes in the face of a small, ageing range. It was all set to be called… the Milano. Sound familiar? Yep, Alfa’s more recent about-face is a case of history repeating itself, although the car that would become the Giulietta hatchback was renamed at the last minute as Alfa had just moved the last of its operations out of the city of Milan, so its employees didn’t take too kindly to the planned name. Perhaps the company should stay away from the Milano name altogether in future.