- The Ferrari Luce’s design has drawn lots of negative comments since it was launched.
- One AI parody suggests that the Luce’s design is what the Apple iCar could have been.
- Chris Harris says the EV looks like a Jaguar I-Pace that’s been rear-ended by an F430.
In the space of about a week, both Mercedes-AMG and Ferrari have unveiled all-electric four-door models that have been roundly mocked for their controversial designs. The reception to the Ferrari Luce has been particularly frosty, prompting a massive sell-off in the carmaker’s shares and already generating memes poking fun at it.
For the first time in living memory, the Luce is the first car from the Italian brand that doesn’t look anything like a Ferrari. Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a shock, as the design was penned by LoveFrom, founded by Jony Ive, best known as the designer of the iPhone. Importantly, LoveFrom specializes in product design, not car design, and the Luce proves that designing an automobile is much more difficult than designing the next great smartphone.
Read: Ferrari’s Luce Is A Four-Door EV Designed By The iPhone Guy
While browsing the web for some of the most intriguing responses to Luce’s design, we stumbled upon this hilarious, AI-generated video that pokes fun at the design and Ferrari’s broader business practices.
The clip includes AI-generated depictions of Ferrari chief executive Benedetto Vigna and Jony Ive speaking about the Luce. In it, Ive says, “This is the new Apple car and it’s (explicit) brilliant,” before he’s quickly reminded by someone behind the camera that he actually works for Ferrari now. “So the Italians asked me to design a car for them. I was already working on a car with my old job, so I basically just turned this piece of (explicit) in,” he adds.
Vigna then mentions the car’s scarcely-believable $640,000 price tag, before being reminded by Ive that shoppers will only be able to buy the Luce if they first purchase “five Romas, two Purosangues, and maybe a watch.”
Also: The New Luce Is So Ugly Not Even The Chinese Will Copy It, Says Ferrari’s Ex-CEO
The satire stings because the real reaction isn’t far off. Luca di Montezemolo, Ferrari boss from 1991 to 2014, told Italian newspapers the Luce should not wear the Prancing Horse and warned the brand is “risking the destruction of a legend.” He called it “surely a car that at least the Chinese won’t copy,” a jab at Xiaomi’s YU7, which launched last year looking suspiciously like the Purosangue. Deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini piled on via X, saying the Luce “looks nothing like a (Ferrari)” and asking what Enzo would have made of it.
Harris Has His Say Too
In a short podcast recorded by Chris Harris and his three co-hosts, he also didn’t hold back in his critique of the car. According to the journalist, the Luce looks like a Jaguar I-Pace that’s been rear-ended by a Ferrari F430. Despite this, he’s confident that Ferrari will sell every Luce it builds. Will this prove to be true? Probably. But we doubt most of its buyers will be Ferrari aficionados as we’ve known them, and we suspect that was the whole point.
