RICO’s Q — Lately, I’ve been talking to some of the other “older” folks, and we all keep circling back to the same idea: the world just doesn’t make sense to us anymore.
Honestly? I’m with them—at least, part of the way.
I’ve always thought of myself as a bit of a chameleon, trying to keep up (sometimes stumbling) as everything around me changes.
But then I see this: a five-seater Ferrari. I managed to wrap my head around the five-seater Porsche, but a Ferrari? And it’s electric, no less?
Even Ferrari’s former boss, Luca di Montezemolo, took a swipe at it. “If I had to say what I really think, I would be hurting Ferrari. This is surely a car that at least the Chinese won’t copy from us,” he said. That’s the guy who ran the Ferrari from 1991 to 2014.
Social media didn’t pull any punches either. The launch sent Ferrari’s stock down more than eight percent in Milan and over five percent in New York. Comments were savage. One person declared, “Ferrari just killed their brand just like Jaguar did. This is straight to the junkyard trash.”
The Daily Mail jumped in, too, sharing doctored images of the new car all over X (formerly Twitter). Some made the Ferrari look like a vacuum cleaner; others compared its design to that infamous “Homer car” from The Simpsons.
Ferrari’s CEO, Benedetto Vigna, tried to put a positive spin on things. He said in Rome that the Luce—Italian for “light”—took five years to develop. He also pointed out that while rivals like Lamborghini and Porsche have backed off on electric plans due to weak demand and tough Chinese competition, Ferrari is doubling down. “We are convinced that a company demonstrates its leadership when it has the courage to dare and to take on the challenge of new technologies. Ferrari Luce was born precisely from this challenge, offering our unprecedented vision of electrification.”
Even John Elkann, Ferrari’s executive chairman and president, got in on the action, presenting the new model to Pope Leo at Castel Gandolfo (the Pope’s summer residence, guarded by men dressed like clowns—Swiss guard).
There was this surreal moment: The Pope, sitting in the Luce’s driver’s seat, Ferrari’s test driver at his side explaining the controls in English (yet another sign of how much things have changed), asks, “Is this the first four-door Ferrari?” Elkann replies, “The first five-seater.”
The Pope, ever the diplomat, didn’t tip his hand. As for me, with zero context and plenty of skepticism, I’m giving it a hard nay—right there with the internet trolls and car critics who say the Luce isn’t really a Ferrari.
Traditionally, a Ferrari’s shape follows its engine. But this time, there’s no engine to dictate the design, so the car sits taller, with the driver perched higher—battery under the floor and all.
Specs-wise, the Luce is a beast: 1,000 horsepower, 0 to 60 in 2.5 seconds, with more than 500 kilometers of range, and four electric motors—one for each wheel.
But as Pierre-Olivier Essig at AIR Capital, in a note for clients reported by Bloomberg, put it: “The Luce looks like a mix between a Honda Accord EV and Tesla 3.” Ouch.
Electric cars are everywhere now—last year, one in every four new cars sold worldwide was electric, according to the International Energy Agency. That’s $26.8 billion in global sales.
Still, with a price tag north of $600,000, I won’t be getting one.
And honestly, it’s not about the money.
I still remember the first time I got up close—no touching— to a Ferrari Testarossa. The Luce is… a five-seater frikin’ Ferrari. The world just doesn’t make sense anymore.