Design, Brand Heritage and has Ferrari gone from Catholic to Protestant?
What can we learn from the noise around the recent launch of the Ferrari Luce, especially when we compare it with the notorious Jaguar 00 introduction about 18 months ago? What’s the right relationship to heritage? Abandonment, slavery or evolution?
Both launches have a lot in common. They set the internet ablaze with opinion. They signalled well known car marques embracing the electric age. They were marketing events focussed on image not performance. Check the websites – you have to look pretty hard to see data on the cars – it is all story telling. To be fair to Jaguar, they have progressed from the original concept 00 to a soon to be revealed fully Jaguar Type 01, so they may be reluctant to talk speed and power yet.
Ferrari got slammed for the design. Despite (or perhaps because of) hiring the biggest name product designers in the world (Jony Ive and Marc Newson) critics moaned that this was just not a Ferrari, that it had ignored one of the most famous car brand design heritages in the world. Many believe it to be too close to the bland aesthetics of Chinese mass markets EVs.
Jaguar got slammed for the marketing. Many critics piled in on the launch video as, effectively, woke window dressing. They despaired that a glorious heritage had been rudely abandoned. There was much less comment on the 00 design itself.
Both critiques focussed on heritage. But I think Jaguar got it right. I remember riding with my glamorous godmother in her E-type when I was 10. It was a stunning car that still turns heads. Recent Jaguars, less so. Their brand audience are starting to get old, and inevitably pass away. In the UK at least, the brand had become more associated with 1970s era football club chairmen in sheepskin jackets. Jaguar had to move on. To do so by effectively saying “screw you” to its existing audience was bold. Some found it positively offensive.
Personally I’m not wild about that video – it is just too obvious. The brand statement – “Copy Nothing” was and is disposable. As proof that it is, in another breath they claimed that they had dug into heritage (which in a circular argument they claimed was itself copy nothing). Weak copy logic.
Also I can’t resist pointing out that the launch pink and design was strongly reminiscent of Lady Penelope’s car in Thunderbirds.
But I get and like the drive behind the message. And it worked if what they wanted was noise. Everyone saw it and absorbed the statement – something very different is coming. The car, as we have seen it so far – lives up to this. It is breathtakingly assertive and nods to those e-type lines - long hood, bulky but flat rear end.
Jaguar saw clearly that they had to make a huge statement both in brand and car design and have done so (we shall see very soon if the Type 01 fulfills on the launch promise).
Ferrari meanwhile do not seem to have the same issues of financial performance and evaporating customer base that Jaguar face. Although unit sales are flatlining they have had a handsome few years and revenue and profit are way up. Ferrari did not need to execute like this (though they did need to go electric). Which makes the Luce look like an unforced error.
Except. Going electric is a much much bigger shift in brand for Ferrari than for almost any other car maker – more than Jaguar I’d say. Ferrari is the noise, the machismo, the sheer rortiness that comes from highly engineered petrol engines. Electric is soft, smooth, clean, caring. Hiring Ive and Newson must have sounded like a fantastic idea to help the brand bridge such a major shift as going electric. Perhaps Ferrari are trying to become a luxury goods company (think LVMH territory) rather than simply a car maker? The attention to detail in the interior design looks amazing. The exterior has some beautiful visual tricks. And yet. This looks like a Protestant car. Fancy exuberance has been stripped away. Iconography is minimised. Displays look like phone rectangles in landscape mode. The launch colour was a cool blue. Baroque, cardinal red Catholicism with curves and grills and fancy moves is out (though you can buy the Luce in traditional red). Ive did incredible work designing mass market consumer technology at Apple. But whatever some people say, a car is not just technology.
It’s possible that Ferrari have seen the future – and it is a world where ostentatious display is frowned on. Or, as some have speculated, this is a move designed for the Chinese market.
Execution matters more than brand statements. In this space, words are malleable, and (as a writer) sorry to say, disposable and cheap.
Which brand has cracked the EV mandate but not cracked itself? Right now, for my money, Jaguar have made a bold and beautiful move — evolution, however brutal. If 01 can keep the design impact of 00, and perform, it will be a classic. Ferrari have perhaps made a different choice entirely: not exactly evolving their heritage but in many eyes, straying too far away from it. Whether that's genius or an unforced error, we'll know soon enough.
PS: See also what we wrote recently about self driving cars.
Mark Curtis
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