Ferrari Luce
Five reviewers split on the Luce — and unite on the cabin.
Five reviews can't agree on whether the Luce is a triumph or an abomination — except inside, where the consensus is unanimous.
Reviewing a car nobody has driven yet turns out to be a test of what the panel really values. Five reviews of the Ferrari Luce went up this week; only Auto Focus claims to have driven it, footage embargoed. The other four were reading the showroom — and what they actually graded was the cabin. On that, the panel could not be more unanimous.
The concession
The Luce is the first Ferrari that Doug DeMuro has called "an absolute abomination." He spends his podcast segment cataloguing the offense — the iPace-derivative profile, the $600K for sub-Lucid Air numbers, the dread that Porsche is about to inherit the enthusiast brand. Then, almost in passing, the concession: the interior, by every account from the people at the press event, is stunning. Carwow's Mat Watson runs the same beat with louder volume. His exterior verdict: the Luce "looks like someone crashed a 360 Modena into a random Chinese EV. Hard." His interior verdict, two minutes later: the steering wheel is "absolutely gorgeous." The two panel voices most determined to find fault cannot find one inside.
The receipts
CarExpert's Paul Maric runs the closest read of the cabin and treats it as engineering, not aesthetics. The switchgear gets the longest beat: he calls the haptic feedback unlike anything else on the market. The key is rectangular metal that magnetizes onto a pad; the gear lever is solid glass; the launch-control pull is a metal lever overhead; the tach is a real physical needle with a customizable digital ring around it. Maric is not given to overstatement — his summary lands all the harder for it. "They've absolutely nailed this part of the integration. It is something entirely special and something we haven't seen before."
The new bar
Auto Focus's walkaround is the only reading where the cabin gets the credit it earned. He runs the cutout displays — a real physical tachometer behind a real aluminum ring, with a digital layer for everything else. Cycling through drive modes, the UI color-shifts: green for dry, orange for sport, blue for wet, ice-blue for ice. The launch-control pull is a metal lever overhead. He keeps coming back to it: "I'm marveling of the interior quality in this car." The cabin is the new bar for the segment, and the segment will follow.
The miscount
EverydayDriver's Paul and Todd are the only voices who place the cabin against the industry. The shape, they grant, is a commodity — "profile not far removed from Model Y," by force of brief. The pricing is the editorial gut-punch. "If it were $120-150K, people would flock to this. Ferrari — this would become what Johnny Ive did with that first colorful bubble iMac." At $500K-plus, the cabin doesn't function as the entry door it would have been; it sits behind the same arm's-length pricing that gates every Ferrari from the new buyer Ferrari claims to want. The achievement isn't priced for what it is.
The interior is stunningly beautiful and like well executed. Great materials. Truly beautiful, purportedly.
Compared to the fussy complicated interiors you get in most high-performance cars, this is actually a breath of fresh air.
The feedback on these switches is incredible. Just so notchy and beautiful. It is just unlike anything else.
I love these controls. I hope more people copy it.
If this had an Apple badge everywhere we would all nod in agreement and accept it.
The reviewers, side by side
5 reviewers. 3 questions. Where the arguments overlap and where they diverge.
The pivot the panel missed
Every voice on this panel touched the cabin. Every voice praised it. The two angriest critics — DeMuro and Carwow — could not sustain their condemnations through the door. CarExpert's engineering eye filed the receipts. Auto Focus named the diffusion. EverydayDriver priced the achievement against the industry and found it sold at the wrong number. What the panel built, while loudly performing disagreement, was a unanimous verdict on the only piece of the Luce they could actually grade.
Ferrari shipped a cabin no critic could refuse — the panel just hasn't said so.