Junior's a better name anyway | Thank Frankel it's Friday

How can that happen? That name would have been decided not months, but years ago. It is the name of Alfa’s home town, one so synonymous with the brand that for over half its life to date (from 1910-1972 to be precise) the word ‘Milano’ actually appeared on the Alfa badge. It was dropped only because by then Alfa had constructed another factory near Naples to build the Alfasud and management felt it odd to recognise one of its homes in this way, but not the other.

Even so, the view of the Italian government was that you can’t call a car made in a town in southern Poland after one located in northern Italy. Whatever the rights or wrongs, the legalities or otherwise, it was a battle that Alfa Romeo either felt it couldn’t win or could not be bothered to fight. It is mildly diverting to ponder whether, had Alfa remained under state control as it had been from the 1930s to the 1980s, whether the government which owned it have proven so intransigent. And the answer to that is clearly not, because it would never have allowed the car to be built outside Italy in the first place.

But the result is the first Alfa fully built outside Italy and which, beneath its body, is essentially the same car as a Jeep Avenger. Will the alfisti still regard a Polish-built EV created by a Netherlands-based multi-national as a true Alfa Romeo? Probably not. But it’s not them to whom the car is designed to appeal, but the infinitely wider world beyond this comparatively microscopic band of Alfa Romeo diehard loyalists.

And, do you know what? Junior is a far better name for the car, a name that not only locates the car at the entry point to the Alfa range, but one that is steeped in Alfa Romeo history. Indeed some of the best loved of all Alfas were proudly called Junior.

The first was the Giulia Coupe 1300 GT Junior – usually merely known as the GT Junior – introduced in 1966 as a little brother to the Sprint GT that started life in 1963. Indeed the new Junior essentially was a Sprint GT, but with a 1,290cc engine instead of one displacing the usual 1,570cc. Visually you need to be a right nerd to tell the difference – but if you see one with a single elegant horizontal bar across its radiator, it’s a Junior. The badges and hubcaps are different too, as you’re asking. Mechanically it came with the same 105-series chassis, still had a five speed gearbox, still had disc brakes at each corner, still had that wondrous twin cam motor under its step-nosed bonnet, still with a pair of twin choke Weber DCOEs strapped to its side.

These are fabulous little cars, even though many have had their 1.3-litre engines replaced by the 1.6-litre unit, even if the smaller motor with its almost ‘square’ dimensions is actually more willing to rev than the long stroke 1.6. They are beautiful, fast enough and are among the most exquisitely well balanced cars you could ever hope to drive.

There were other Juniors too, including a homologation run of 493 GTA Juniors with engines of radically different internal dimensions despite producing the same 1,290cc capacity, and aluminium body panels dropping the weight from 990kg to 920kg. As standard the car produced 96bhp – up from 88bhp – though a full Autodelta competition engine with Spica fuel injection was good for an incredible 160bhp at 8,300rpm.

The Junior even became a model in its own right rather than a derivation when, in 1969 the striking, Zagato-styled GT Junior Z went into production and stayed there, first as 1.3-litre model, then a 1.6, until 1975.

So ‘Junior’ is a name not only relevant to the new car’s position within the Alfa range, but with a rich history dating back to the halcyon days of the brand. Makes we wonder why they didn’t call it that all along. Some have even suggested Alfa called it Milano knowing full well it would incite a punch up with government, affording its new car the kind of publicity it could never otherwise have hoped the achieve. If so it was a marketing masterstroke.