Let there be Luce

It’s never easy when you’re entrusted with a legend, is it. There are all sorts of business theories about how innovation eventually leads to stagnation because the very spirit of innovation that led to success gives way to a desire to not risk whatever it is that has heretofore been a significant money maker.

So if you were, say, to work at Ferrari (to pluck an example out of the air) you might find the sort of plucky determination that made the company’s name 80 years ago a little hard to come by in this era of hedge funds and sentiment and share prices.

Ironically the share price has been among the things that have given way at the storied Italian manufacturer in the last couple of days. Ironic when something blandly put together to tick all the boxes ends up doing none of them.

Carmakers often have the luxury of planning five or six years out and having foresight over a finished range of products that we’ve not even seen yet.

Having never produced an electric vehicle before and being a little late to the party Ferrari really needed to do something interesting – what it’s ended up doing is taking a leaf out of Jaguar’s ‘annoy everyone’ playbook and just hope that the global publicity will be enough.

I keep thinking that I don’t actually mind the new Ferrari Luce, but then I see a side shot and it looks like a badly iced slice of cake. It’s got a pound shop radio controlled car vibe about it, or maybe it’s what you’d get if you asked AI to come up with a render for a Ferrari-branded autonomous taxi for a California tech campus.

There are two scenarios here – either it doesn’t sell and Ferrari looks stupid, or it sells loads and we all look stupid. Though to be fair we all look pretty stupid for caring this much about a trinkety throwaway plaything for people with too much money in the first place.