It happens with some pieces of music: you listen to it for the first time and you feel like you’ve heard it before. This is what happened when faced with the images of the new Ferrari Luce, which is so dividing the Cavallino’s shareholders, with a thrilling crash on the stock market for savers: minus 8.37%, 5 billion burned, the equivalent of 10 thousand new models, almost the entire production of 2025. But the public is also getting busy, from social media to sipping coffee at the bar: especially those who, like me, are talking about a Ferrari in the roaring petrol version, but also in its innovation Elettrolux, they will never be able to afford it. So we dive into the controversy of the week and compare the new Maranello model with that “already heard” model from the past. Small preview: it wasn’t a Ferrari.

The comparison between Ferrari Luce and Fiat Coupé: the silhouette

Obviously we are talking about external similarities, not a definitive judgement. You will comment on it below. And we won’t go into the interior, since an innovative car based on digital control has nothing to do with its ancestors. We have to go back to 1994. Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger drove the Ferrari Formula 1. And Fiat, which was then an all-Italian industrial and popular power, launched its Coupé, here in the 2.0 16V Turbo version (photo above and below).

The aerodynamics bear the signature of the famous designer Chris Bangle: his ideas also included the Alfa 145 and the success of numerous BMWs, from the Z3 to the 7 Series. The interiors were instead entrusted to the Pininfarina style centre. The statistics recall that 70 thousand models were sold until 2000, the year they stopped production. We don’t know if the creators of Ferrari Luce, Sir Jony Ive and Marc Newsom, former Apple and now stars of the Lovefrom studio, sought inspiration in the Italian past. I’ll leave you with the photographic review. But don’t miss a brief reflection at the end, which concerns us closely. Even if we will never buy a Ferrari.

Ferrari Luce and Fiat Coupé: cousins ​​also in the rims

Ferrari Luce and Fiat Coupé seen from behind: shape and headlights

The legendary Ferrari: red and sporty, but it’s from 2013

A large part of the public, but evidently also of the shareholders, loves the red, sporty and roaring Ferrari. However, petrol, at most hybrid. Like the LaFerrari hypercar model, pictured below. Pure Italian design, conceived by the Ferrari style center and launched in 2013.

Driving a Ferrari Luce is obviously very different from getting behind the wheel of a Fiat Coupé: a completely innovative “experience”, ensures the electric language inaugurated by Maranello. However, a popular myth, like the Cavallino, generates discontent if it changes too quickly. This has happened to many brands. Imagine if Måneskin started singing like Sal Da Vinci. Or if Nutella did without hazelnuts. However, the electro Ferrari without the roar could please China, or the emirs of the Gulf, if and when they go back to spending their petrodollars and Donald Trump puts an end to the war.

All the engineers behind the Ferrari Luce – by Cesare Treccarichi

Success is not ruled out a priori. It’s a matter of taste, but also of era. Digital capitalism is trying to rout the traditional metalworking industry. And car companies like Ferrari, like all of us with our jobs, find themselves in the midst of the revolution. But given that Maranello has preferred a former Apple designer to its Italian designers, we hope that customers who spend 550 thousand euros will not be bounced by their dealers, as happens today in Apple stores with the fateful sentence: “Your computer is already five years old: it’s too vintage, we won’t repair it anymore”. We ordinary human beings are left with the vintage and cheap past of the latest sports Fiat: on used car sites, it is worth less than 10 thousand euros.

Read Fabrizio Gatti’s other editorials on uisjournal.com