Motormouth: Ferrari Luce is cute - ugly but adorable
Ferrari Luce is cute - ugly but adorable, and also understandable.
[Story by guest columnist Justin Lee, a Singaporean industrial designer by training]
The controversial first Ferrari EV broke the Italian marque’s traditional design rules in dramatic fashion and also broke the internet, but for good reason. It’s a radical Ferrari for a new generation.
Love it or loathe it, everyone has an opinion on the look of the Ferrari Luce! Since Ferrari revealed its first battery-electric model, Luce, in May, the amount of press it has generated has been, not unexpectedly, overwhelming.
The iconic Italian sports car manufacturer has taken this opportunity to develop an EV model as a blank slate, to really relook every aspect of how and what a Ferrari electric car should be. But not everyone agrees with how the Luce has turned out.
To the naysayers, of which there are many, including former Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo, who decry the fact that the Luce does not look like a traditional Ferrari – I am afraid to say that Ferrari had no choice.
My feeling is that Ferrari, in order for its first EV to make an impact befitting the brand, had to break all the rules for the Luce by working with Jony Ive and Marc Newson for the Luce’s design direction.
This pair may have little automotive design experience, but instead they have an impressive track record of brave and outstanding design thinking, and more importantly, developing products which have been influential in shaping how technology is used.
Seeing the Luce’s instrumentation and switchgear, the thoughtfulness and importance of tactile feel in driving a car is evident, and this from the ex-Apple chief designer who gave us the iPhone and iPad.
Ford 021C concept car, designed by Marc Newson in 1999.
Unlike Jony Ive, Marc Newson - the other creative responsible for the Luce - has actually designed a vehicle before, the 1999 Ford 021C concept car.
With its bright paintwork (orange originally and then green), plus rear-hinged rear doors with no B-pillars for easier access, this compact four-door sedan was certainly eye-catching, but most petrolheads at the time dismissed it as upright and awkward, interesting but weird. It was futuristic, but more Jetsons than Star Wars.
I am certain some aspects of the Luce’s design, however detested at the moment, will appear on other cars a few years later. Maybe it will be the vertically-placed windscreen wipers, because they improve forward visibility and are also partially self-cleaning!
Ive and Newson seem to have been given free reign with the Luce, and it certainly takes a company that is fully confident of its identity to take such a bold step forward.
Therefore, in many ways, the Luce’s design direction was inevitable. On the road, it will not sound like a typical Ferrari, so why shouldn’t it also not look like one too?
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