I lived through similar dynamics (though not at Ferrari, of course).
The management knows that they need something new and out of their comfort zone. Someone (from within or without) suggests an idea that would never been accepted in the olden days.
The management, for the sake of their company, would suppress every instinct they have built over the years, often over-correcting. This inevitably results in some questionable choices seeping in, in the name of openness to new paradigms.
And not every time this goes well.
I'm not saying this is what's happening here. These are world-class engineers and designers, but nobody is immune from a bad decision or two.
Exactly, I've experienced the same a few times, in different industries.
That's why I can imagine Ive's company wowing the management with an early interior concept pitch, but then demanding also exterior design ownership as part of the agreement because "it needs to be a coherent design, like an iPhone".
Sounds perfectly reasonable and easy to vouch for. Management feels like they are anyway in control because they decide whether to launch the product or not.
But if the product starts to shift over the course of the development, someone in management has to make the call. And that's a very expensive call to make.
I've personally been with companies which had such big-name collaborations that "deviated" from expectations in very advanced development-stages.
I've seen companies successfully intervening, but more often than that scale-down the project or cancelling the entire collaboration and ending the project, as no partial solution could be agreed on.
The latter was especially common with Design Companies (e.g. Porsche Design, Prada, the earlier LVMH), as their contracts were not phrased for collaboration but for creative control. I would assume Jony Ive sees himself in the same bracket...
This happens all the time. Ferrari taking inspiration from BYD is certainly brave, but it there is a fine line between bravery and good old stupidity.
As the saying goes: It's good to keep an open mind, just not so open your brains fall out.
Ironically BYD's 300 mph looks a bit like a trad ferrari (https://www.autotrader.co.uk/content/news/byd-builds-world-s...)
They needed something bold for their first foray into this market, but this is wrong direction bold lol
honest question: is there any difference between this and the Pontiac Aztek? I guess time will answer that one...
>> the Aztek was to signal a design renaissance for GM, and to "make a statement about breaking from GM's instinct for caution. One designer said that during the design process, the Aztek was made "aggressive for the sake of being aggressive." Peters, the Chief Designer said "we wanted to do a bold, in-your-face vehicle that wasn't for everybody."
The Pontiac Aztek was at least bold, and like the Nissan Cube, people didn't like the looks, but those who bought it really seemed to love it inordinately.
This thing isn't even bold, it's just ... a generic car?
If they had made it outrageous (think: teardrop which is most efficient aerodynamically or something) it'd make more sense.
> Pontiac Aztek was at least bold
How bad does a design have to be that this is a valid attack?
The Luce is so generic it borders on nihilism - destroying the very concept of Ferrari precisely because Ferraris are good.
My cousin bought a brand new aztek off the lot for way way below sticker like 60% because they sold so poorly because of how ugly they were perceived to be. I think the people who love them probably love them because of how cheap they were.
[dead]
Isn't this how the Jaguar fiasco came to be?
When I first saw the third generation Nissan Primera [1] many years ago, this is the thought that occurred to me: some bold, enterprising designer somehow managed to convince the organization to push through a radical, risky departure from their usual aesthetic. The 2010 Nissan Juke too, felt similar (I owned one myself). In my view, both models worked out. I don't think Ferrari was that lucky.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Primera
Well I'll say this for the design (as a non-designer):
1. It doesn't look like any other car, though it still obviously looks like a car
2. The buzz, good or bad, is going to mean people hear about it, talk about it, and see it
3. If you see it in public you're likely to recognize it; whether that's a good thing or not remains to be seen
But doesn't it look simply like "every sports car", like a dilution of all sports cars?
To me it's like how a sports car would look in a video game which has no license to use actual cars.
A "McLovin Testosterona"...
I wonder whether the mere-exposure effect [0] could also be at play here.
For me, the first reaction to the Ferrari Luce was utter shock, but after looking at it again several hours later I'm starting to see some of its exterior elements differently (although my brain finds it hard to call the car "beautiful" in the same way as some of the other recent Ferrari models).
It looks like a decision was made to depart from the "modern"-looking Ferraris, but the direction of that departure seems to be very different from what the competitors are doing and what the general public is looking for visually in such a car (but it's worth keeping in mind that members of the general public aren't really customers of this car).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect
Just to clarify: I'm not saying the car is ugly, it's a good looking design.
But it's not a Ferrari design, it dropped almost all of the brands' identity and design language in favor of becoming a more "uniform sportscar design".
To me personally this is quite on-brand for Jony Ive's past work, where the exterior design of the product is diluted to the "least-offending version of its kind", a vessel to the high-quality interior experience which is focused to "excite the user".
In the mobile phone space this was disruptive, because (accidentally) it created the "normalized mobile computing platform" needed to transform the industry into a Smartphone industry.
But I'd say the sports car industry is different, I don't see a benefit in having the "most normalized sports car"...
I've only ever sat in a Ferrari, never driven one, but the interior looks exactly like what I'd expect from a modern Ferrari.
As for the exterior, I really don't like the front - but I think that's because a tall Ferrari is just wrong (for example, I think the Purosangue looks incredibly generic too).
Exactly - it's a "fine sedan" for Kia, Honda, even Apple to release (I'm sure someone has put an Apple logo on it already).
But it doesn't scream "Ferrari" nor does it scream "look at me I'm driving a half-million euro car".