In a lengthy, wide-ranging interview with Automotive News [sub], Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne got an awkward question from AN’s Luca Ciferri.

Your five-year plan forecasts that Chrysler’s operating margin will peak at 7 to 7.7 percent of revenues in 2014. In November 2006, you predicted that Fiat Group Automobiles’ operating margin would peak at 4.5 to 5.3 percent in 2010. How could Chrysler’s post-global recession peak profitability be 50 percent higher than Fiat Group’s pre-global recession assumptions?

Well, Sergio?

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Can you tell Alfa-Romeo had to change the name of its 147-replacing Giulietta at the last minute? And yes, this is an official image.

Automotive News Europe [sub] reports that Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has ordered a strategic review of the Alfa Romeo brand, citing declining sales and mounting losses. Alfa’s sales have fallen from 203,000 units in 2000 to 103,000 last year, and the brand has lost between €200m and €400m in each of the last ten years. According to Marchionne, Fiat’s sporty brand has undergone too many reinventions. “You cannot be a newborn Christian every four years,” he explains. “It’s the same religion, eventually you need to own a religion and carry it to conclusion.” The recent delay of the 147 replacement due to name-related issues was merely the latest trouble for the Alfa brand, which has struggled with aging products and underinvestment. According to Marchionne, Alfa faces two possible futures: retirement or rebirth… on Chrysler platforms?

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Alfa Romeo was founded in Milan some 99 years ago, but as a division of Fiat, it’s pulling up its roots to relocate its remaining 232 Milan-based employees (out of 20,000 employed there twenty years ago) to the mothership’s hometown of Turin. CEO Sergio Marchionne explained that the move is strictly business, saving the company costs by consolidating operations, but the move has one minor rub: Alfa had planned to revive the “Milano” nomenclature for its 147 successor. Obviously this proud reference to a local heritage that no longer exists caused a few problems with employees, prompting Fiat to hastily announce a last-minute name change. Rather than Milano, the name Giulietta will be used for the new hatchback. But the last minute irony-avoidance maneuver pushed back the launch of the new Alfa, which was supposed to debut with official images today. As Automotive News [sub] reports, “the decision left some monthly magazines scrambling as they had already received pictures of the car, which was badged the Milano.” Whoops! Time to re-order those decklid badges… unless the decision to go with Giulietta was inspired by the discovery of boxes of unused badging. Fiat made another such last-minute name change in 2003, when the ill-advised name “Gingo” was dropped in favor of “Panda” because its was deemed too similar to Renault’s Twingo.