No one spotted the enormous smiley face on the dashboard of the Ferrari Luce.

      Jerry Perez

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      Everyone has their own feelings about the Ferrari Luce, and I’m not here to discuss your firmly held beliefs today. Instead, I want to highlight a little design feature of the contentious Ferrari EV that we hadn’t initially noticed—until our correspondent in Italy, Jerry Perez, explored it in person and discovered it.

      The Luce clearly embraces a design theme of circles and squircles, which will not surprise anyone who has used an Apple product over the past three decades. This motif appears throughout the gauges, the instrument panel they’re housed in, screens, and numerous dials, some of which feature even smaller displays. The sedan’s interior is one aspect that seems to be gaining acceptance among people now, likely because the exterior is drawing most of the criticism.

      As Jerry scans the dashboard in the video below, a pair of eyes and a nose become apparent, situated between what appear to be two large circular vents and another circle of similar size beneath them, which could be a speaker. A seam in the tan leather between the two levels of the dashboard creates a wide mouth, resulting in what resembles a playful emoji peeking out from behind the glass, looking up.

      It’s playful and, as some might argue, aligns with the car’s un-Ferrari-like soft and friendly character. The Luce, like all luxury vehicles, offers endless customization options, and the top dashboard can be covered in one of eight colors, according to the online configurator. Opting for a darker shade, such as Charcoal or Cioccolato, will make those black circles less prominent. It’s worth considering when selecting options for your electric $600,000 Ferrari.

      What better way to emphasize the upper dashboard vents of a classic Ferrari than with OutRun 2’s cockpit view? Ferrari, Sega.

      Now, did designers Jony Ive and Marc Newson intentionally give this car a face? In a sense, they drew inspiration from Ferrari's heritage with those dash-mounted vents; iconic models like the F40 and 512BB featured similar ones, although they were not as large and were typically spaced further apart. They also didn’t create a broad smile from above. What was once old is new again.

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