The Ferrari Luce is a rare miss for Ferrari in a catalogue of some of the greatest cars that have ever roamed the streets of the earth and I break down the why’s and what’s for you.
- Cyrus Dhabhar
I make no secret of the fact that Ferrari is my move beloved brand on the face of the earth - not just automotive, but otherwise. Having been driven in a Testarossa for the first time when I was 4 years old to having driven most modern Ferraris and come out of the experience always smiling, to have been a lifelong and unwavering Tifosi all my life, even if it meant despair, depression and tears, I love the passion, the exuberance and the art this automaker brings to the world of otherwise drab, grey and white automobilia. But even I can’t stay quiet when it comes to their latest car - their first electric car - the Luce.
Now let me be perfectly clear here - I love electric cars, of course I would prefer an internal combustion engine for the reasons of driving pleasure, but an EV makes gigantic sense in an urban enclave full of traffic and waiting and those too thick headed to see it certainly need to experience more of one and then rethink their opinions on them. I also think electric hypercard, as record breaking as they are, are kind of useless considering the target audience they are catering to. But an electric city car, or an electric Rolls-Royce Phantom (which they should have made) or an electric SUV that is going to most likely be driven around short distances in places like Los Angeles, London, Beijing, Monaco or Mumbai are a great use of this tech.
So then why does the Luce fail where say the Porsche Cayenne EV hasn’t or for that matter, Tesla, hasn’t. It is all to do with the Ferrari badge it wears. Let me explain. A Ferrari is not a sensible car purchase, it is an emotional one. Even Ferrari’s SUV that they refuse to call an SUV, the Purosangue, is NOT a sensible SUV. In an era of turbos and hybrids, Ferrari put in a naturally aspirated V12 and gave it suicide doors, all for one and only one major purpose - an emotional connect! Every tom, dick and harry can have a twin-turbo V8 G63 if you have a little bit of money today, but a naturally aspirated, V12, Italian built SUV is a different ballgame, which is also why it was priced the way it was. The Luce, on the face of it, has none of the excitement, none of the design prowess and none of the emotion that every other Ferrari has had in spades!
This is what I think happened - Ferrari needed a new electric vehicle to meet fleet emissions regulations that are mandated in Europe and when the ‘ELECTRIC IS KING’ wave hit the world during the Covid lockdown, Ferrari took the bold and obvious choice to have an electric offering. The fault lies with what happened next - I can bet my reputation that some sort of global analyst firm was hired to show them the way forward, they charged Ferrari a large 7-8 figure sum, and fed them the whole, ‘electric cars have to be different to appeal to the new tech money crowd’ dribble that we have been force-fed for the last decade. In that presentation, I bet there were also points on how ‘younger people do not like cars anymore’ and how the line between tech/gadgets and cars would have to be narrower or nearly non-existent for it to work.
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Ferrari then looked outward to design this, instead of Flavio Manzoni continuing the design approach he has taken - as controversial as it is - and hired Jony Ive, the designer of things like the iPad, iPod, iPhone and more at Apple in the past. We think the board of directors, probably greatly influenced by a bunch of mid-timed information, gave him a brief to make something that looked like an iPhone on 4 wheels, which to be honest, the Luce does! Jony Ive seems to have got the brief right, but in my humblest opinion, I think the brief - AS A FERRARI - was wrong! The Luce wears a Cavallino Rampante and it HAS to evoke emotion - that is the first rule of being a Ferrari. If this was not a Ferrari and was an Apple car instead, the Apple iCar or iCar Pro Max or whatever nomenclature they would come up with, this would be perfect! But it isn’t. It is a Ferrari, and it just does not make any sense.
Now there is a flip side to this discussion too, one that I agree with also - to an extent. Porsche has done the 911 almost unchanged since its inception. Lamborghini has taken the wedge shape and made it It’s signature from the time of the Countach, Ferrari on the other hand has constantly innovated with it’s design language - the 250 family styled curves of the 60s, the Daytona styling era of the 70s, the wedge also in the 70s and then peaking in the 80s, the slightly weird era of the late 90s with the F50, 550 and 360, the brilliant aggressive yet minimalist design of the 2010s with the 458 and family, and then the new design era we have seen from the likes of the SF90 to the 12 Cillindri, there has been constant innovation in design and styling. Luce is the odd man out. It does not adhere to the design language of its era in any form or factor, in any shape or size.
It looks ambiguous, it looks ordinary and it looks like any other white labeled Chinese electric car, dare I say it. If this was a Honda, or a Hyundai, or a Kia, or any other mass market brand, we would have liked it because it pushed their design to a new and different height, but not Ferrari.
So what about under the hood? Ferrari gave us ‘accessible’ hypercar horsepower in the SF90, even more ‘accessible’ hybrid supercar tech in the 296 GTB - which actually works and is still today the best car I have ever driven in my life - and still gives the world naturally aspirated V12 beauties - basically something that always steps the game up. The Luce fails there too. It gets just 1050 hp. Now, I know how stupid this might sound - just 1050hp - but in an era where a Porsche Cayenne turbo Electric gives us 25 percent more horsepower, that is a concern. It also gets just 530km of WLTP range - and imagine that range dwindling down really quickly when someone drives this Ferrari, like a Ferrari.
I have no doubt it would drive like no other EV does, with its double wishbone suspension at the front and rear, and an evolution of the 48V Multimatic TrueActive Spool Valve dampers first used on the Purosangue. It even has some synthetic noise - but not the ones from a V12. But with 0-100 in 2.5-seconds, thats nearly 0.6 seconds slower than a Tesla Model S Plaid which just went out of production, one has to ask what truly makes this better. In fact, this is the first Ferrari where instead of just the shields on the side, you can get a much much larger Ferrari Cavallino on the side panels - just to remind everyone of what it is you are driving.
It isnt all doom and gloom though - the Luce does have two wheel options, both fantastic - a conventional 5-spoke and a turbine style aero wheel that looks straight out of a sci-fi movie. Particularly impressive because Ferrari somehow just cannot get a set of wheels right in recent times. As much as people dislike the interior, I love that too. I like the new meets old design language that has been used on it, I like the use of materials and I also like the tool switch use, all of which reminds me of classic Ferraris and just generally, classic motoring - perfect since Jony Ive himself has (or had) a very very cool classic car collection himself. With the exception of the handle on the screen, something I think is truly overkill, I love the way the steering wheel harks back to classic Ferrari wheels, how the dials look older but have modern functionality and how the Manettino is back to an older style on a modern electric car.
Now if only instead of designing a nondescript blob, Ferrari had put all this interior design in a modern interpretation of a classic 80s Testarossa style wedge shaped super sedan that would make a Rolls Royce Phantom look like Play-Doh, and charge the same absurd $6,50,000, the world would be swooning over it. I guess that manual gearbox can’t come soon enough for Ferrari then!
