Ferrari, Jaguar, and the Mythology Mistake the Luxury Industry Keeps Making
The luxury industry is having the wrong conversation about Ferrari.
Since the Luce was unveiled in Rome on 25 May, the debate has centred on design — whether Jony Ive’s interpretation of Ferrari’s soul is faithful or treacherous, whether the five-door silhouette belongs to Maranello or Silicon Valley, whether the former Chairman’s brutal verdict — that Ferrari risks destroying a legend, and that they should at least remove the prancing horse — is the voice of custodianship or conservatism.
These are interesting questions. They are not the important one.
The important question is structural: how does a brand with $80 billion in mythology arrive at a decision that its own former steward says risks destroying it? And what does the answer reveal about every luxury brand navigating the same pressure — including the ones being built right now?
The Pattern the Industry Refuses to Learn
Scuderia Ferrari HP is not the first heritage luxury brand to make this mistake. It will not be the last.
Eighteen months ago, Jaguar unveiled a rebranding so radical it effectively erased the brand’s identity. Gone was the leaping cat. Gone was six decades of British automotive heritage. In its place arrived a kaleidoscopic visual identity, androgynous models in no relationship to cars, and a tagline — Copy Nothing — that paradoxically copied every luxury fashion brand’s aesthetic simultaneously.
The backlash was not aesthetic. It was structural. Jaguar’s audience did not object to modernisation. They objected to erasure. The brand had not evolved — it had abandoned.
The lesson was clear and unambiguous: luxury brands derive their power from continuity of mythology. You can adapt the expression. You cannot abandon the soul.
Eighteen months later, Ferrari has made a version of the same mistake — different in its specifics, identical in its underlying logic.
Both brands, under pressure from shifting markets and demographic anxiety, prioritised category relevance over mythology coherence. Both hired external creative authority to solve what was fundamentally an internal architecture problem. Both generated immediate cultural conversation — and immediate mythology damage.
The competitive context makes Ferrari’s decision more indefensible, not less. Lamborghini cancelled its planned EV citing lack of demand for high-end electric supercars. In the wake of the Luce’s reception, Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelman told CNBC that the decision to cancel was the right call. When the CEO of your direct rival uses your launch as public vindication of their opposite strategic choice, the mythology damage extends beyond share price.
The industry watched Jaguar. It learned nothing.
The Jony Ive Problem
Ferrari’s decision to hand creative authority over the Luce to Jony Ive and Marc Newson, of LoveFrom was architecturally revealing before the first sketch was drawn.
Ive is the world’s most consequential democratiser of design. His life’s work — the iMac, the iPhone, the iPod — made technology beautiful and accessible to billions simultaneously. His design philosophy is oriented toward inclusion, clarity, and the removal of barriers between people and products.
Ferrari’s mythology is built on the precise opposite: inaccessibility, theatre, the visceral beauty of a machine that exists outside the rules of polite, considered design.
These are not merely different aesthetics. They are opposing philosophical positions on what design is for.
The result — compared to a Honda Accord, an Apple Store minivan, and a luxury toaster — was not a failure of execution. It was a failure of architectural logic. When you hire the world’s greatest democratiser to design the world’s most exclusive object, the outcome is predictable before the first sketch is drawn.
Ferrari shares fell 6.27% in Milan trading, wiping approximately £3 billion in market cap. Analyst Anthony Dick at Oddo BHF called it “by far the sharpest reaction we’ve seen for a car design.” Analyst Pierre-Olivier Essig wrote simply: “We are lost in translation with Ferrari’s new strategy.”
These are not reactions to a car. They are reactions to a mythology decision.
The Upmarket Trap Closing In
To understand why Ferrari made this decision, you have to understand the pressure every luxury brand is now under.
As contemporary and premium brands — empowered by advanced supply chains and accessible manufacturing — increasingly replicate the visual codes of luxury, the aesthetic distance that once separated true luxury from premium has eroded. Every brand looks expensive now. The visual vocabulary of luxury is no longer defensible on aesthetics alone.
Ferrari looked at this landscape, at inevitable electrification, at a new generation of wealthy buyers with different loyalties, and made a decision that prioritised relevance over mythology. It hired the most famous product designer in the world to build a car for people who are less concerned with what a Ferrari was than what a Ferrari can be for them.
That sentence is the problem. The moment a luxury brand designs for people less concerned with what it was, it has begun dismantling the architecture of desire that made it valuable.
Some will point to the Ford Mustang Mach-E as proof that heritage brands can absorb mythology extension. In 2024, the Mach-E outsold the gas-powered Mustang by 17.6%. By Q2 2025, the gas Mustang had reclaimed its sales lead as Mach-E sales fell 19.1% year-on-year. More fundamentally, Ford is a volume brand. The Mustang is a popular performance car. Ferrari is a mythology brand whose entire valuation rests on symbolic distance and irrational desire. These are categorically different mechanisms. What works for Ford is architecturally dangerous for Ferrari.
Hermès understood this. When the same pressure tightened, Hermès deepened scarcity, controlled distribution more rigorously, and leaned harder into institutional myth-making. Revenue growth that consistently outpaces peers who chose differently is not coincidence. It is the commercial proof of mythology discipline.
Ferrari had that discipline. The Luce suggests it may have lost it.
What This Means for Founders Building Luxury Brands Today
The Ferrari and Jaguar failures carry a lesson that reaches far beyond automotive strategy. It is most immediately actionable for founders at the beginning of their luxury brand journey — precisely because they are making architecture decisions before they have mythology to lose.
The strategic question every brand must answer before any significant decision is not whether it will grow the business or reach a new audience. It is whether it protects and deepens the mythology.
Ferrari had the mythology. It had the scarcity. It had institutional heritage no competitor could replicate. What it lacked, at the moment of the Luce decision, was the architectural discipline to refuse a commercially attractive option that mythology coherence should have made unthinkable.
That discipline — knowing what a brand can afford symbolically, not just financially — is not instinctive. It is not inherited with the badge or the founding story. It must be built deliberately, tested against real decisions, and maintained under commercial pressure.
The brands building luxury today have one advantage Ferrari did not: the pattern is clearly visible before they have built enough mythology to lose.
The question is whether they are paying attention.
Abhay Gupta is the Indian Luxury Strategist, Founder and Chairman of Luxury Connect, and Luxury Connect Business School. He works with luxury founders globally on brand architecture, mythology building, and strategic positioning