As Ferrari Luce divides enthusiasts, and Waymo Jaguars roam our cities, the future of motoring suddenly feels less mechanical, more autonomous — and strangely unsettling.
Ferrari Luce from above: less traditional grand tourer, more autonomous capsule. The dramatic overhead view reveals a machine designed around experience and access rather than mechanical theatre.
Credit: Ferrari S.p.A.
The unveiling of the Ferrari Luce produced the sort of reaction normally reserved for the extinction of a beloved species.
Ferrari Luce: to some, a bold vision of the future; to others, further evidence that the automobile is becoming less mechanical object, more rolling technology platform.
Credit: Ferrari S.p.A.
Yet the extraordinary hostility directed toward the Luce has very little to do with the car itself.
The anxiety is cultural.
Ferrari v Nissan. To critics, the comparison was unavoidable: Ferrari Luce above, Nissan Leaf below. A supercar price tag attached to proportions some journalists felt belonged more to consumer electronics than Maranello.
Credit: Ferrari S.p.A. / Nissan Motor Corporation
Somewhere beneath the discourse surrounding autonomous technology, artificial intelligence and software-defined vehicles lies a far more unsettling question:
What happens when the motorcar ceases to be something we drive?
Waymo cars await instruction in Miami, Florida
Credit: Ceri Breeze
Just last month, at home in Miami, Waymo's driverless taxi service became available to the public, while manned Waymo test vehicles had begun to appear on the streets of Mayfair. For most people, the development barely registered. Another technology story. Another incremental shift toward an inevitable future.
And yet, taken together with the arrival of the Luce, the moment feels oddly profound.
Steve McQueen beside his 1963 Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta Lusso — a machine celebrated not merely for how it looked, but for the simple fact that its owner preferred to drive it himself.
Credit: ZUMA Press Inc.
For more than a century, mobility and motoring were effectively the same thing. To move was to drive — or at the very least, to be driven. Now, for the first time since the birth of the automobile, those two ideas are beginning to separate.
The implications are enormous.
At the beginning of my career, I had a young banker client who confessed that he had never understood his colleagues’ obsession with cars.
Young City bankers at lunchtime in London, 1995 — a generation intoxicated by ambition, bonuses and the mythology of success, for whom the exotic sports car remained an essential symbol of arrival.
Credit: Homer Sykes
He did not own a car. In fact, he did not even possess a driving licence. While others fantasised about Aston Martins and Ferraris, he regarded the entire business as faintly irrational.
“I don’t want a car,” he shrugged. “I want a driver.”
At the time, it sounded almost absurd — the sort of remark that could only emerge from the overheated confidence of late-1990s finance culture.
And yet, perhaps he simply arrived early at the future.
"I don't want a car, I want a driver"
Credit: Camerique
Autonomous mobility finally fulfils that old aspiration entirely. No ownership. No chauffeur. No parking. No inconvenience. Merely seamless transportation from one location to another while emails are answered and calls — or cocktails — are taken in motion.
There is another irony to this strange new automotive moment.
The autonomous Waymo vehicles now operating in California, Texas and Florida are all Jaguars – which feels faintly surreal when one remembers that Jaguar was once responsible for one of the most emotionally celebrated designs in motoring history.
Sir William Lyons presents the Jaguar E-type to the world's motoring press in Geneva on the 15th March 1961 at the Parc des Eaux Vives
Credit: Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust
When the Jaguar E-Type was unveiled at the 1961 Geneva Motor Show, Enzo Ferrari himself reportedly described it as “the most beautiful car ever made”. The Ferrari founder was said to have been captivated by its proportions and purity, joking only that it was a shame the car did not wear a Ferrari badge.
More than six decades later, Jaguar again found itself again at the centre of automotive interest.
Jaguar Type 00: unveiled in late 2024, the dramatic concept divided opinion instantly — hailed by some as fearless reinvention, dismissed by others as a complete abandonment of Jaguar tradition.
Credit: Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC.
Jaguar's dramatic rebrand in November 2024 — followed by the unveiling of a radical new concept vehicle — was met with derision in many enthusiast circles. Critics accused the marque of abandoning the very heritage that once made it culturally significant.
And yet perhaps Jaguar’s transformation tells us something uncomfortable about the future of the motorcar itself.
The E-Type represented the triumph of beauty, speed and mechanical theatre. The autonomous Jaguar, by contrast, is designed not to stir emotion, but to remove friction. Not to celebrate driving, but ultimately to eliminate the need for it entirely.
One cannot help wondering what Sir William Lyons and Enzo Ferrari would have made of that transition.
A Jaguar steering wheel carrying instructions not to touch it: for traditional enthusiasts, the image captures the strange contradiction at the heart of autonomous motoring.
Credit: UPI
The irony, of course, is that the future being promised by Silicon Valley bears almost no resemblance to the culture traditionally celebrated by motoring enthusiasts.
They don't merely want transportation – they want ritual.
The cockpit of a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spyder: delicate instrumentation and a steering wheel designed to be held — not ignored.
Credit: Buzz Pictures
Enthusiasts want the cold metallic click of a door handle. The weight of an unassisted steering rack. The chatter of a carburettor on a damp morning. The slight awkwardness of a dog-leg gearbox. They want machinery that demands participation rather than passive occupancy.
And this may explain why the reaction to the Luce has felt so visceral.
Consciously or otherwise, enthusiasts sense that they are not merely arguing about styling or drivetrains. They are confronting the possibility that driving itself may no longer remain central to everyday life.
1961 Ferrari 250 GT Spyder SWB displayed at the Petersen Automotive Museum (Dec. 2017)
Credit: Irina Brester
Of course, there is another contradiction quietly hovering over the modern collector-car world.
Many Ferraris are barely driven at all.
Increasingly, they exist as investments, preserved in climate-controlled garages and discussed more often than they are exercised. Their values rise while their odometers scarcely move.
The irony is almost irresistible. At precisely the moment autonomous technology threatens to remove the human from driving entirely, some of the world’s most desirable driver’s cars have already become static objects — admired, collected and financially traded rather than fully experienced.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) transformed the Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder into something larger than a collector’s object: a symbol of freedom, rebellion and the sheer joy of driving.
Credit: Photo 12
Which perhaps explains the enduring emotional power of the Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Not because it remained hidden away, but because it represented something increasingly rare: the idea that a great car exists to be driven, enjoyed and remembered.
As transportation becomes increasingly frictionless, silent and autonomous, analogue motoring may evolve into something more intentional — less appliance, more leisure craft. The automotive equivalent of horseback riding after the arrival of the railway.
Which makes it oddly fitting that the most famous symbol in motoring remains a prancing horse.
The Luce may signal a radically different future for Ferrari, yet the prancing horse still occupies the centre of the steering wheel
Credit: Ferrari S.p.A.
This is why the current moment feels so emotionally charged. People instinctively understand that they may be witnessing the closing chapter of one automotive age and the uncertain beginning of another.
The Ferrari Luce did not create that anxiety.
It merely arrived at precisely the wrong — or perhaps perfect — moment.
For most of the twentieth century, the motorcar represented freedom. Increasingly, however, the future of mobility appears to involve surrendering control entirely — not merely to a chauffeur, but to software.
Ferris Bueller’s Ferrari airborne above Chicago: reckless, improbable and utterly unforgettable — the sort of irrational automotive memory no autonomous transport pod will ever replace.
Credit: Getty images
Which may explain why old Ferraris still matter so deeply.
Not because they are efficient.
Not because they are practical.
But because they remind us that driving was once about participation, risk, noise, imperfection and memory — rather than merely arriving at the destination.
Footnote
In 2024, seven-time Formula One World Champion Lewis Hamilton paid tribute to Ferris Bueller's Day Off by inserting himself into the film as the garage attendant who borrows the Ferrari for an unforgettable adventure.
Created, in Hamilton's words, “for all the kids out there who dream the impossible.”