When you think about Ferrari, chances are you think about a sleek Italian car that looks kind of like a spaceship and costs more money than the average single-family house. Maybe you think about TV shows like Miami Vice or movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Chances are you don’t imagine a four-door blob of a car that looks like a Prius by Playskool, weighs as much as an F-150 pickup truck, and makes zero engine noise. But that’s exactly what Ferrari debuted last week. It’s called the Luce, it’s an electric vehicle, it costs $640,000, and it looks to be the biggest product introduction flop since Crystal Pepsi.
The Luce doesn’t resemble any other Ferrari in the company’s 79-year history. It looks pretty much like every other electric four-door sedan on the market, only worse. The button-free interior, with its bright colors and blank screens, looks uncomfortably like the evil digital tablet in the upcoming Toy Story film. The back of the car looks like it’s giving birth to another, smaller car.
The day that Ferrari’s USA Instagram account introduced the Luce, Instagram followers left more than 1,500 comments on the post. I read all of them, so you don’t have to. There was not a single positive response. Nearly 60 of the comments were some variant of the idea that the new car is a betrayal of the company’s founder: “Enzo Ferrari is rolling over in his grave.” The other reactions ran the gamut from comedy (“Can you darken the pictures more so I can’t see the car?”) to outright insult (“Piece of shit”) to fear (“As a shareholder, this concerns me”). And that shareholder was right to be concerned: The day after the reveal, Ferrari’s stock price slumped 8 percent in Milan and 5 percent in New York.
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Think for yourself, not by yourself.
You will search in vain for anyone who is particularly excited about the Ferrari Luce. I took my best shot, which was calling a high-net-worth Ferrari collector who has bought more than $10 million worth of cars from the brand. “It’s the worst,” he said. “I really hope I don’t have to buy one. Please don’t use my name.”
