Ferrari GOING its first all-electric vehicle, Ferrari Luce, in a cacophony of criticism this week, leaving the iconic brand in the lurch. After Monday’s launch, the stock fell 8 percent and didn’t recover until Thursday, when CEO Benedetto Vigna defended Luce, saying customer interest was “strong”.
What made the reaction so extraordinarily widespread outside automotive circles is a specific quality of Luce’s design failure, according to automotive design experts. Ferrari has always sold desire across class lines, and people who could never own one still had a relationship with the brand, through posters, races and the simple fact that a Ferrari looks like nothing else on the road. However, Luce flattened the aesthetic by keeping the price above $600,000, enraging not only his fans but the general public as well.
The backlash even reached into Ferrari’s own past. Luca di Montezemolothe company’s longest-serving chairman in post-Enzo era, reportedly told an Italian news agency that Luce risks “destroying a legend,“and said he hoped Ferrari would remove the prancing horse emblem from the car. Di Montezemolo ran the company from 1991 to 2014, and his public rebuke of an actual Ferrari product is unprecedented.
Paul Snydera veteran automotive designer with decades of experience at major volume manufacturers such as Ford AND Hondaand currently Paul & Helen Farago The Chairman of Transport Design in College for Creative Studies in Michigan, called Luce “shocking because it just doesn’t look like a Ferrari at all,” comparing its dimensions to a student’s first exterior clay model and arguing that it lacks the two most basic visual readings of a Ferrari: silhouette and surface. “There’s just no originality,” Snyder told the Observer.
Derek JenkinsSVP of Design and Brand at Lucid MotorsLucid Air, which has been compared to the new Ferrari Luce, made a similar distinction between the car’s exterior and interior. “The face of the car is not identifiable. That’s where the answer comes from. It’s a mismatch with the brand,” Jenkins told the Observer. He was more favorable about the cabin, calling the steering wheel “nostalgic and modern” and praising the switches and air vents as “thinking about the brand in a future context”.
Jony Ive’s design magic doesn’t translate to sports cars
Ferrari has a contract with Jony Ive AND Marc Newsondesign firm Love From for Luce. The interior, unveiled last year, received mixed reviews for its mix of analog and digital. The exterior design, however, has become the basis of Internet memes. Ive is best known for designing the former Apple iPhone and works on the never-launched Apple Car, while Newson is known for his design of a concept car for Ford called 021C.
But just because Ive and Newson have designed beautiful and iconic appliances and furniture doesn’t mean they can design a car. Industrial design and automotive design are two very distinct skill sets, as Snyder points out.
Snyder said Ive’s work at Luce would have received a “two out of five” on external evaluation criteria such as originality, proportion and college appeal, equating the exterior design to a high school sophomore project. “It has none of the emotional factor or the sculptural factor or the dynamism and boldness that Ferrari should have,” he said.
“It really seems entirely derivative of the whole artificial intelligence side you hear about in car design,” he continued, adding that if the aerodynamic wing above the windshield were removed, the dramatic glass line Ferrari created at considerable engineering expense could have been something truly new. Snyder also noted that if the interior design language had been applied to a city car, or a smaller vehicle like a Cinquecento, it might have resonated more positively with audiences, but in a Ferrari, it doesn’t make sense.
CEO Benedetto Vigna’s dangerous pilot
The interior reflects a deliberate approach that is said to have come from the top of Ferrari. In an interview with Autocar India published in AprilCEO Vigna called it “weird” that people assume an EV must have multiple screens, saying Ferrari’s approach with the Luce is to merge tradition and innovation. The company opted for tactile buttons, numbers and switches instead of following the industry trend towards touchscreen-dominated interiors.
Automotive analyst Stephanie Brinley at S&P Global Mobility argued that the market reaction is likely to be short-lived. Ferrari operates at low enough volume that even a polarizing car can find enough buyers to be commercially viable. “It’s not the first Ferrari that people have been scratching their heads about,” she said. “You can fix the design with money and time.” The real risk, she said, is if the car sells poorly and the Ferrari doesn’t turn around.
Vigna told a roundtable in Modena on Thursday that customer interest has been strong from young ultra-affluent buyers, a group the brand has been trying to recruit for some time, with particular focus on the rise of China’s wealthy classs, though luxury automakers are struggling in the country because of the economic environment there and local competition. It remains to be seen whether Ferrari’s Chinese audience will follow the polarizing design.
Whether the market agrees with Ferrari’s design bet or the internal response of the rest of the world will be answered by Ferrari’s orders, not online. Vigna noted that order numbers will be revealed in July when the company releases its second-quarter earnings.
