One of the big new releases of the week is called Capri. A name that seems very Italian for a vehicle from an American manufacturer and produced in Germany. Already heated on the subject, Alfa Romeo sends a nice nod to its competitor.
It will have escaped no one's notice that the latest Ford is bringing back the Capri name. A name launched by the American manufacturer in the 1960s, first with a coupe version of the Ford Consul, then a full-fledged model. At that time, having an Italian name without being produced in Italy was not a problem and no one found anything wrong with it. But could Ford have its right to use the name challenged?
If this were the case, Alfa Romeo has already found the solution for its competitor. On its X account, the Italian brand suggests that Capri is in reality a neighborhood in the suburbs of Cape Town in South Africa, with supporting illustrations. But since the brand is American, one could also argue that the name was chosen in reference to one of the neighborhoods of Gainesville in Florida…
But why does Alfa get involved? Because the brand presented its small SUV Milano on April 10. The Italian Minister of Industry reacted strongly to discovering the car, which has the name of an Italian city but is produced in Poland. Among our neighbors, there is a law that fights against this. A few days later, Alfa put an end to the controversy by renaming the vehicle with the name Junior.
At Alfa, did we have difficulty digesting this episode? The brand is perhaps surprised by a “double standard”. All this still remains pleasant and falls within the framework of friendly communications between rivals, among which we can cite the Renault Laguna first of the name which congratulates the Mercedes C-Class for obtaining 5 EuroNCAP stars, the lookalike of Dieter Zetsche , boss of Mercedes, who as soon as he retires hastens to take his BMW out of the garage, or even Jaguar's response to Mercedes' advertising praising the comfort of its suspensions is a scene of chickens... BMW and Mercedes are elsewhere great regulars of the genre.
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