#BrownCarGuy – News, Views & Reviews!
Someone has just spent $40 million on the world’s most expensive toaster. That is the sensational headline emerging from Monterey Car Week, where the first production chassis of Ferrari’s controversial electric Luce crossed the block at RM Sotheby’s.
The Ferrari Luce may prove to be one of the most important car designs of recent years, not because it is revolutionary, not because it is beautiful, and certainly not because it has been universally admired. Quite the opposite. The reaction to Ferrari’s first electric car has been so overwhelmingly negative that it may have inadvertently transformed how enthusiasts view every major design reveal that has followed it. That sounds absurd, but bear with me.
A funny thing has happened on the road to electrification. Along the way, someone assumed that the future of luxury motoring would be silent, seamless and battery powered, that the world’s wealthiest buyers would lead the charge into a brave new era of zero-emissions indulgence, and that once the millionaires and billionaires embraced electric cars, the rest of us would naturally follow faithfully in their tyre tracks. It sounded plausible enough. After all, if anyone could afford the latest technology, it would be the people who think nothing of dropping the price of a semi-detached house on a weekend toy.
Ferrari has officially revealed its first fully electric production car, the all-new Ferrari Luce EV, and honestly, I bewildered and apoplectic with rage. This is the company that gave us the Ferrari F40, Testarossa, 288 GTO, Dino, Daytona, 308 and 458 Italia. Cars that looked like rolling works of art. Cars that made grown adults weak at the knees and children plaster posters across bedroom walls. And now… this.