#Alfa #Romeo #Milano #Italian #sounding #cars
If the Biscione company paid homage to the city where it was founded with the new sports SUV, foreign manufacturers have chosen Italian names for numerous models. Let’s remember them
Until a few days, the concept of Italian Sounding was linked to another of the great national passions, namely food. If the current government has put the accelerator on to defend our best food products from falsifications and imitations abroad – with damage to image but above all economic – it must be said that even those in the past had already moved more or less with commitment. Instead, it was very difficult to predict that there would be talk of Italian Sounding on the automotive front: the Minister for Business and Made in Italy Adolfo Urso did so, underlining that Alfa Romeo broke Italian law by calling Milano a car that will be built in Poland . Having said that this is clearly a political move within the ongoing conflict between Stellantis and the government, in fact the Industrial Property Code, amended several times after its enactment with the Legislative Decree of 10 February 2005, could justify to Urso. But this is not what interests us, even more so by observing that, returning to the topic of food, it is one thing to accuse foreigners for decades and another to be able to block them or at least limit them. If anything, it should be remembered that the Milano is a tribute to the city where Alfa Romeo was born, which follows the reference to two important passes in the Alps such as Stelvio and Tonale. And that from 2005 to 2010, Pininfarina produced the Brera coupé, one of the most famous neighborhoods in Milan. And if you want, there is also the MiTo (Milan-Turin), the only small car from Biscione built from 2008 to 2018. Long live Italy and long live the city of the Navigli, but Alfisti won’t forget the two-seater sports car Montreal, built from 1970 to 1977 Canadian Sounding?
LINGUISTIC DELIRES
—
No, in fact the car was actually requested by the Canadians: in 1967, the organizers of the Montreal Universal Exhibition had chosen Alfa Romeo to create a car model that could represent the “maximum aspiration achievable by man in terms of automobiles “, in order to display it as a technological symbol of the Expo. No sooner said than done, the great Marcello Gandini designed the prototype for Biscione, built in four examples by Bertone. The success at the exhibition and the requests from Canadian and American dealers were so pressing and repeated that Alfa Romeo was forced to put the car into production. This is to say that we shouldn’t get too excited about the names of Italian cities assigned to foreign cars that essentially bring prestige – if they are well built – to our country. And in any case the names of cities are always those chosen a bit at random and leave you perplexed. You pass by the Suzuki Alto and Baleno or the Volkswagen Lupo but the Daihatsu Consorte (sedan from the 70s), the Mitsubishi Pistachio (three-door hatchback from the early 2000s), the Isuzu Piazza (small-medium sports car from the 80s ) and the Nissan Stanza (a sedan built from 1977 to 1992) would have deserved a class action, rather than the reprimands of Minister Urso. We can console ourselves by noting that the Japanese have historically had a weakness for us, among other things also for cuisine.
FORD’S FIXATION
—
Let’s go back to the cities. It’s not clear why Kia decided to remove an ‘r’ from Sorrento to call its European flagship of the SUV range: perhaps it feared some lawsuit? Luckily, Ssangyong has instead chosen to celebrate Italy by naming its first compact SUV Tivoli: no mispronunciation also because reading the name of the town in Lazio backwards becomes “I lov it”, i.e. I love it. In light of the limited success (less than 50 thousand units), we must listen to the Opel of the 80s for having bothered one of the iconic cities of speed such as Monza for an ugly coupé which was replaced by the more performing Calibra (more than Italian Sounding it is a nuisance) in 1989. But the company that looked most closely at our cities was Ford, which starting from the 1960s – perhaps also due to the last-minute failure of the purchase of Ferrari – played a lot on the theme. First with the Cortina (sedan only for the English market, produced from 1962 for the following two decades), then with the Capri (coupé produced in three series from 1969 to 1986) and again with the Torino, reserved for North America and built in multiple variants – coupé, sedan, station wagon and cabriolet – between 1968 and 1976. The evolution of the Torino GT version which had a sporty interior led to the launch of the Gran Torino in 1972 with an even more aggressive look than the previous one, inserting a large ‘fish mouth’ grille. A model that is not particularly well made, not powerful, made with outdated technology and quite heavy. But made immortal first for use in the popular American television series Starsky & Hutch between 1975 and 1979 and subsequently as the car of the gruff veteran and ex-Ford worker, played by Clint Eastwood in the 2008 film Gran Torino. Other times, also for the Turin of the car.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
)
