GoKawiilFor nearly 80 years, Ferrari occupied a unique cultural space where its cars were aspirational, even for people who resented those who could afford them. The price, the exclusivity, and the opacity of the buying process allowed Ferrari to sail above ordinary criticism. You might not be able to afford one, but you still wanted one.
The Luce has arrived in a moment where wealth inequality and corporate excess have rarely been this visible or this resented. In that environment, a car that costs more than most people earn in a decade, yet looks like something bland and mass market, was always going to land hard. Ferrari has always sold desire across class lines. The $640,000-plus Luce homogenizes the aesthetic while keeping the Ferrari price, enraging loyalists and fans alike.
“The reaction illustrates how intrinsically the brand identity, expectations, and design are tied together,” Derek Jenkins, the SVP of Design and Brand at Lucid, told The Verge. “I can see a couple of things in the exterior design that still reference the brand. The taillights for one, the red color option, and finally, the logo. Everything else — proportions, lack of visual agility, even the expression of performance — is missing from the exterior. The face of the car isn’t identifiable… It’s a mismatch with the brand.”
“The face of the car isn’t identifiable… It’s a mismatch with the brand.” — Derek Jenkins, SVP of Design and Brand at Lucid
The Luce is the longest Ferrari ever built, eschewing the brand’s traditional sharp, aggressive lines for a more sweeping, aerodynamic profile. It’s also Ferrari’s first five-seater, with a low stance that almost makes it seem like a hatchback. It looks as though its sleek, dark “glass house” cabin is nested inside a separate, chunkier aluminum shell. And instead of a traditional grille, it features an S-duct swoop that drops down. It’s baffling to look at.
As Raphael Zammit, chair of transportation design at the College for Creative Studies in Michigan, explained, industrial design and automotive design are two very different disciplines, and the skills from one do not consistently translate to the other. Ive’s Apple iPhone design made the physical phone disappear, Zammit said, and was “100 percent appropriate for a digital communication device that you hold in your hand.” But a Ferrari is not an iPhone.
Ferrari’s decision to hire LoveFrom was a choice with a built-in logic, Zammit argued. “Ive is a brand,” he said. “When you hire Brad Pitt, you expect to get Brad Pitt.” The interior of the Luce has been praised for its blend of analog and digital touchpoints. But the interior language would likely be much more at home in a small premium city car, he added, such as a Fiat 500 or a Cinquecento, not a supercar that retails for half a million dollars.
Stephanie Brinley, automotive analyst at S&P Global Mobility, said that the blowback has intensified as a direct result of the economic and political moment we’re living through. “It might end up being a blip on Ferrari’s overall history,” she continued, “I don’t see why this particular vehicle needs to destroy the Ferrari legacy.”
Image: Ferrari
A moment of collective trolling
... continue reading