There are certain things in life you simply don’t mess with. A great steak, a well-aged whisky, and the sound of a Ferrari at full throttle. For decades, Maranello has built cars that made otherwise sensible men do very irrational things. Hand over savings. Rearrange their lives. Stand on a kerb and stare.
Then, last week, Ferrari unveiled the Luce. Its first fully electric car. And the internet, as one, collectively raised an eyebrow.
We’ll be honest with you. We weren’t sure what to expect. What we got was a five-door, five-seat sedan that looks like it was designed by someone who has never been to a Grand Prix. Which, as it turns out, is more or less what happened. Jony Ive, the man behind the iPhone and the iMac, led the design through his studio LoveFrom, and his less-is-more philosophy is stamped all over it. Brushed aluminium everywhere, clean surfaces, the kind of interior that feels more Cupertino than Maranello.
Now, we have nothing against Jony Ive. The man is a genius. But there’s a reason you don’t ask a watchmaker to build a yacht.
The backlash was swift and it came from everywhere. Analysts pointed to “design hate” as a driver of Ferrari’s share price reaction. Fans said it diluted the brand. And Luca di Montezemolo, the man who ran Ferrari for two decades, was about as diplomatic as you’d expect. “I hope that they take off the prancing horse from that car,” he said, at a conference in Rome. Not exactly a glowing endorsement.
The performance figures, for what it’s worth, are still pretty serious. Over 1,000 horsepower spread across four motors, one per wheel, with four-wheel steering and active suspension. It will be extraordinarily quick. But then, so is a Porsche Taycan. So is a Tesla Model S Plaid. Speed, in the electric era, is no longer a differentiator and instead the standard. And Ferrari has never been about the standard.
One branding expert said it better than most. Historically, Ferraris bypassed logic. They were irrational purchases, justified afterwards. The Luce reverses that equation. It asks to be understood before it is desired. Admired before it is loved. That is not a small thing to give up. That emotional pull, that feeling in your chest when you see one parked on the street, is essentially the entire product.
Ferrari will draw comparisons to the Purosangue, which faced a similarly cold reception before quietly becoming one of their strongest sellers. And perhaps they’re right to. Tastes change. People come around. Manzoni has been resolute on the matter. “We don’t like the déjà vu effect,” he said, making clear this was a deliberate departure, not an accident.
Maybe it grows on us. Design often does. But right now, the Luce doesn’t make us feel the way a Ferrari is supposed to make us feel.
And for a brand that has sold that feeling for seventy years, that’s worth paying attention to.