You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who really, really likes the Ferrari Luce. Sure, the storied Italian automaker has built controversial cars in the past (the Purosangue, FF and F50 spring to mind), but none of them have garnered the same sort of hate that the company’s first pure-electric vehicle, first sedan and first five-seater have. That has apparently caught Ferrari by surprise.
Despite the fact it doesn’t really look like a Ferrari on the inside or outside, it doesn’t sound like a Ferrari, it isn’t powered by a traditional Ferrari drivetrain and it costs the better part of $650,000, the automaker was surprised by the sheer volume of negative feedback it received. I’m really not sure how, and keep in mind: I probably like the Luce more than most people do.
Ferrari’s global marketing director, Emanuele Carando, told Edmunds that, while the company did expect “a strong reaction, a very polarizing reaction,” it “didn’t expect such a magnitude.” Basically, Ferrari didn’t expect pretty much everybody to hate the Luce. Though no one inside Maranello seems worried, at least not on the outside. Carando says there’s no such thing as bad press, and the backlash the Luce has received is actually free advertising. Sure, Jan.
Here’s what else he told Edmunds:
“Being a marketing director, I was very pleased. Ferrari is such a loved marque that belongs to everybody, and everybody has a right to say something about it. Still, whenever you develop something new, the novelty scares everybody,” Carando said.
[…]
“This has happened before … remember when we launched the Purosangue four years ago? The magnitude was not the same, but we had many comments about Enzo Ferrari rolling in the grave. I think probably now the Purosangue is one of the most loved cars worldwide,” he said.
With LoveFrom, Jony
Of all the issues folks have with the Luce, the biggest and most unforgivable — to most people — is probably the way it looks on the outside. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people accuse the Luce of being “The Apple Car” with a Ferrari badge stuck on the front, and while I don’t think that’s the case, I can see where those people are coming from. It certainly doesn’t look like a Ferrari, not in the traditional sense. What it actually looks like is a Jony Ive product. So, if you’ve got an iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch, it’ll look really good alongside that, but it might not match too well with the 458 Italia in your garage. The inside is a different story. I really dig that — especially all of the physical controls- but it’s not really enough to make up for the lack of Ferrari-ness on the outside.
Hell, even Ferrari’s ex-CEO, Luca di Montezemolo, said the company should “remove the prancing horse” from the car, and if he said what he really thought about it, he’d be doing Ferrari a “disservice.” Ouch.
Carando contends that this was all on purpose — that the Luce was never supposed to look like other gas-powered Ferraris, as he explained to Edmunds:
“We could have taken the Purosangue, removed the 12-cylinder engine and put the battery and electric in there, but we thought that would not have been the right decision,” Carando said. “[We] made something we wouldn’t have been able to if we didn’t have this technology — a spacious car with a very short front hood, which allows the driver to be very close to the front axle, allowing you to have incredible precision in entering curves.”
Carando says he doesn’t expect the bad press and even worse public reaction to last forever. Sooner or later, it’ll begin to soften — just as it did with the Purosangue before it. Enzo probably isn’t rolling in his grave right now. As long as the $640,000 Luce sells in large enough numbers to fund his F1 and WEC teams, I think he’ll be resting just fine.
