Alfa Romeo’s replacement for the 147 name will not have the Milano name attached to it due to an ongoing rift between the company and its former Milan-based workers, according to a report by Automotive News Europe. The publication’s sources reportedly said that the car will be named the Giulietta instead.

It doesn’t take much to realize that Alfa Romeo’s workers in the region around Milan (Milano in Italian) would be upset about the proposal to name the car Milano amid actions by Alfa to shut down operations in the area. Fiat S.p.A., the owner of Alfa Romeo, said that the remaining 232 Milan-based designers and engineers will relocate to Turin, 150km to the west sometime in January or February of 2010. The rationale for the move is to “increase efficiency and save costs.” This scenario is a far cry from 20 years ago when Alfa Romeo employed nearly 20,000 people in and around the city of Milan. Fiat had acquired Alfa Romeo in 1986 and since then, its operations had been gradually uprooted from its birthplace. In fact, production in the Milan area had ended in 2000.

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