Everyone has some kind of opinion about the Ferrari Luce, and I’m not here to debate your deeply held opinions today. Instead what I’m here to do is point out a little design quirk of the controversial Ferrari EV that we didn’t originally notice – that is, until our man on the ground in Italy, Jerry Perez, took a spin around one for himself and saw it.
The Luce clearly carries a theme of circles and circles that won’t surprise anyone who has picked up an Apple product designed over the last 30 years. This motif runs through the gauges and the instrument binnacle sitting inside them, screens and abundant dials, some of which have even smaller displays of their own. The interior of the sedan is the one aspect I usually see people getting excited about by now, if for no other reason than that the exterior is drawing all the ire.
When Jerry pans the camera on the dash in the reel below, a pair of eyes and a nose reveal themselves, with two large circular vents in the middle and another circle of the same radius below them, which may be a speaker. A seam in the brown leather between the two levels of the dash creates a wide mouth, and it leaves us with a veritable emoji behind the glass, greeting the sky.
It’s goofy and, some might argue, it fits the car’s non-Ferrari soft and friendly feel. Like all ultra-expensive cars the Luce is endlessly customizable, and according to the online configurator, the upper dashboard can be upholstered in one of eight colors. If you choose a darker shade, like charcoal or cioccolato, those dark circles won’t be as noticeable. There are probably a few things to consider when optioning your electric, $600,000 Ferrari.
Now, did designers Jony Ive and Marc Newson intend to turn a blind eye to this thing? In a way, they departed from Ferrari’s history with those dash-top vents; Legends such as the F40 and 512BB also had them, although they were not as large and were usually located far from each other. On top of that, he didn’t even show a big smile. What’s old is new again.
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