Looking Out - The Podcast
Looking Out - The Podcast
EP27 - The Identity Issue Pt. 1
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We promised that we'd follow up with a discussion about the exterior of the Ferrari Luce. And we have. Sort of.
The challenge is that, beyond slinging epithets its way, there's really not a lot to say that hasn't already been said.
Or is there?
In this episode, we explore the uni-context, a philosophical concept — developed by Agnes Callard — that might explain why everything is starting to look the same, including Ferrari's first EV.
We also explore the movements in our garages (farewell, good ship Margot!), Drew's experience of designing a pilgrimage in Japan, and the rather underwhelming introduction of the Audi Nuvolari.
Sources:
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Hello, and welcome to Looking Out the Podcast, in which we connect the dots across mobility, design, and culture. My name is Joe Simpson, and I am an automotive design strategist based in the UK, working for an OEM whose views I do not and have never represented on this show.
SPEAKER_00And my name is Drew Smith, leadership coach, pilgrimage guide, and newly minted transbinary, non-binary person living in Sydney, Australia, who once upon a time worked in the automotive industry and was extremely passionate about design strategy. Also, good friend of Joe.
SPEAKER_01Now, a few months ago we uh did a little episode on the Froilucci interior when uh that was unveiled. Um, it was the first episode we'd done for quite a while, and we thought it was high time we came back and uh discussed the exterior among a few other things that have been happening in the car design space. Uh and yeah. Drew?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I I I I just want to know what you've been up to lately, Joe. First of all. Oh God. Um how's it how's how's it you've been back in the UK a little while now? Like how how's it how is it settling?
SPEAKER_01It's coming up on a year that I'm back in the UK.
SPEAKER_00Well, that tells you how often we've been recording.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I know. It's scary, isn't it? Um, us best friends. Um I'm currently uh very jealous of all my Swedish friends who are on their four-week semester break and are travelling around various bits of Scandinavia and Europe, and I am sat in a student dorm in the British Midlands. I think I may have taken the wrong life path at some point. Um but no, it's not all bad because I was in central London today and uh reminding myself how wonderful London is and soaking up the culture there and talking to some very interesting people. Um, and uh other than that, um I appear to be changing and trading cars every five minutes. Um what have you got? What have you got? What have I got at the moment? Um I've I don't think I've told you this. I've got a company car.
SPEAKER_02Can you can you guess what it is?
SPEAKER_00Oh uh Defender 110. Yeah, yes. Is it is it is it an octa? No, it's not an octa.
SPEAKER_01It's such a strange brand that, isn't it? Okta. Octa. Um it is green though, so uh you know I tried to I tried to not be like everyone else around me and choose a black or grey one. I thought I'd bring some colour into the world. Um I've also got an uh a BMW i3 that's fairly neat to us, a twenty a 2021 i3. So offsetting the Defender with a bit of um electric futurism. Um I've still got my T 2008 T T, although it's currently dead because I haven't used it for about seven weeks. Um and I've still got a three series touring an F31, although that might be making way for a 987 box to quite shortly.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, how about how about you?
SPEAKER_00Well, let's start with the cars. I recently sold my beloved Margo, um my white over navy blue MB Tex 1990 Mercedes-Benz S124300TE. Um yeah, since we bought the Lake. Why did you sell it? It's a good question.
SPEAKER_01It's a car that many people have as the kind of, you know, I think the pinnacle of of of Mercedes.
SPEAKER_00The pinnacle pinnacle of carness. Um I I was talking with somebody on Blue Sky the other day, and we were talking about the fact that you know, for me, the the W124 is like an car. It's like the definition of like the premium sedan and station wagon, like ever. Ever. Like I just don't think it's been topped. Um, so why would I sell it? Uh I mean the reality is when you've got an R129 500 SL and you've got a Lexus GS450H, um the room for like I mean, we're we're we're two people and a cat. And I just didn't have that many fucking grandfather clocks to carry. To move around. I'm not an antique stealer. Um, and it was funny, I I so Chris, my husband, um, had been very adamant that when we got the Lexus, he wanted the Lexus to be in the garage with the SL. And so that meant that the wagon was gonna have to live out on the street. Um the problem with S124 wagons is that they all rust a little bit around the beautifully elegant and elongated side glass, which means that you get water in the floor pan. Oh. Not a good thing. Yeah, so I parked it um in my parents' sort of um sort of storage compound, which is about 20 kilometers away from where I live, and it just wasn't getting used. Yeah. Um, I had a man come to buy it from Brisbane. He flew down um because he has a white over navy blue 300E sedan, and he wanted the and he wanted the station wagon to go with it.
SPEAKER_01Like I mean, I guess if you're flying from Brisbane on a one-way ticket, you're not gonna get there, kick the tires, and go, no, mate, it's too expensive.
SPEAKER_00He is what he was taking that car away. He is what you call a motivated purchaser. Um and I picked him up from the airport and I and I picked the route home that would best demonstrate just how unbelievably smooth and refined this thing was. And like by the time we got back to to our apartment, he was like, Yeah, yeah, okay, fine. I I I I want this. Here's the money. After after having not driven it for a couple of months, I got back in it, and sure, like it's a very, you know, it in terms of its dynamics, it's an old car, but in terms of its refinement, like it, you know, it's still I mean it was just unctuous. Unctuous was the word that I want to describe the driving experience of that car. So that the S124 has gone. Um immediately people popped up on Blue Sky telling me what I should buy next.
SPEAKER_01Um But you've already bought the Next, you've got a Lexus GS458. Drew, why have you got a Lexus GS? This coming from someone who once famously described the leather in a Lexus RX as like the skin on the back of grandma's hand.
SPEAKER_00And and look, the Lexus in the GS is not that much better, to be frank. Um and I mean we've had this we've had this a good few months now, and the longer I have it, the more I come to appreciate that thing. Um mostly because it just feels like you could drive through a war zone and you know, like James Cameron style. You know. The Lexus emerges from the The Lexus emerges from the smoke. Like, you know, maybe with a gun turret on top um for a little extra excitement. No, I'm I'm I'm still deeply in love with that thing. Um it's never gonna really set anybody's tits on fire as as as as an exciting car, but as a car that brings about a deep sense of satisfaction and well-being every time I drive it. So so I I'm not getting a new car. I've I'm I'm absolutely not getting a new car. This is what I'm telling myself. We are not getting another car. Although I did see a 1990 928 GT for sale the other day.
SPEAKER_01I was just gonna say, I was I was listening, something to I was listening to a podcast that mentioned 928s, and I thought, do the two people I know, Drew Smith and Sam Livingstone, who've had 928s, are either of them considering buying a 928 at this point? And I thought the likelihood is there's some equation with people who've had nine to eights, which is like the answer is yes, you know.
SPEAKER_00Um unfortunately, a little bit out of my price range. The the 928 GTs these days are now like getting up close to 100,000 Aussie dollars. Well, and they they only brought 24 of them into Australia, so they're extremely rare. Um LS430. Go on. Well, hear me out, right? I've owned two W-140s, uh the S-class Mercedes built between what 1991 and 1999, something like that. Often also considered the high point of ANCAR, you know, for a luxury large sedan. Um yeah, look, I have a very complicated relationship with the W140, mostly related to their ability to drain one's bank account. And I'm very curious to see if the LS430 would offer, say, I don't know, 90-95% of the experience, but with Toyota reliability.
SPEAKER_01I thought you were gonna say whether that could drain my bank account as quickly as the W140s I've had, you know.
SPEAKER_00No, it's a Toyota! It's a Toyota, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. Anyway, no newcast. Um, no newcasts for now. No newcasts for now. Uh, what else is new? Um I have oh, so I ran my first group pilgrimage in Japan, which was absolutely wonderful. Um it and and before people kind of start going, oh shit, he's gonna get all spiritual and woo on us, I want to talk about this from a design perspective, right? Because I think when we work in the commercial design space, we so often and and I think this is particularly true of strategists, you know, we paint this picture of how we want the future to be, and then we kind of have to hand that off to a bunch of people and hope it that they don't fuck it up. And they almost always fuck it up.
SPEAKER_01Listen, he generalizes, but he also is true, he also is correct.
SPEAKER_00Um, so what's been amazing about building this pilgrimage business is that from suit tonight, like literally from the ground level up, my wonderful business partner Cal and I have been able to both design and execute this thing exactly how we've wanted to. And there's something, I mean, I guess I now sort of understand how an artist feels when they have just sort of complete creative control over what they put out in into the world, and it's something that I had never really experienced working in the commercial design space. So there's something profoundly kind of enriching and and wonderful about that. And I think the other thing that I hadn't accounted for was what happens when you create an experience and then you invite, in this case, we had four people walking with us, and they they bring their own thing. So, yes, we've designed the experience, but then you bring four random elements in who all of a sudden turn this thing into something that's massively, massively, massively more than the sum of its parts. And every time Cal and I do this thing, we're gonna have eight different people, because we'll be taking eight from from from November onwards, eight different people all bringing their own spirit, all bringing their own sense of creativity, all bringing their own kind of intention to this walk that we do through the Japanese countryside. So every single one is gonna be different. And that just fucking blows my mind.
SPEAKER_01I thought that the um analogy you drew to kind of the design designer space was quite interesting because you walked the El Camino before you left Europe, and then you then you did this pilgrimage in Japan yourself, and now you are guiding these. So what was it that led you to decide that you wanted to guide people yourself?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I first walked the so the the trail is called the Izeiji, and it's part of a really famous network of um Japanese um pilgrimage trails called the Kamano Kodo, um which you can find give or take about five-six hundred kilometers south of Tokyo on the main island of Honshu. Um they are uh Shinto um pilgrimage trails, um, but there's a there's a long history of what's known as syncretism in this area, so Shinto and and Buddhism sitting side by side. So that's the context in which we're we're doing this walk. I first walked it in 2024. I've have never really considered myself to be a particularly um spiritual person, although that's been shifting with a lot of the work that I've been doing over the last few years. And as Cal and I were doing this walk in 2024, as we were doing the walk, we could feel ourselves being changed by it. You know, there's something about you know, in that case, it was 10 days of wake, eat, walk, eat, walk, eat, bathe, sleep, and you're just doing that for 10 days in a row. Life is really stripped down to its absolute essence, and and we were doing this in connection, we were doing this in company. We felt ourselves being changed, and the conversation just kind of naturally started emerging. It's like, well, what would it be like if we took this, if we shared this with other people? Because we could feel how special it was. And even on that very first walk, the designer in me was thinking, Oh, well, yeah, how would we open this experience? Like, how would we support people through it? You know, how would we guide people towards creating an intention that that that might focus the change that they experience over the course of the the the nine days that we'd be together? Um and so it really just started as a as a creative brain fart. It was like, oh, yeah, you could you could actually design this thing from start to finish, and then you know, put it down to the magic of you know, the forces of the universe conspiring, all of a sudden here we are, we're doing it. And I I'm I'm really unbelievably proud of what we've created, and I'm so excited to be able to share this with more and more people.
SPEAKER_01That's very cool. Can I do the most hacknid, horrendous segue to cars from that?
SPEAKER_00Yes, go for a joke.
SPEAKER_01You were just talking about basically designing an experience. Um so why do I feel that when I look at what's happening in the car industry right now and some of the cars we might talk about a little bit um on this podcast, that designing the experience is now um the the number one game in town. Um and yet, and yet, um there is definitely Chinese leadership in that space, but broadly I'm not seeing anything that sets my world alight. I haven't experienced anything that I think is particularly um radically life-changing, new, um, you know, pushing the boundaries. And I I get the feeling that everybody in the industry in the space and that's probably listening to this podcast knows that that's the thing, but it's also kind of not the thing that any of us are sort of were originally in this for.
SPEAKER_00And and when you say experience in this context, how are you defining it?
SPEAKER_01Very good question. Um I'm gonna talk about it in um a couple of ways. The uh interaction between a person and the vehicle, so the space that they sit in and the um physical and digital things that happen in that car, um, be it stationary or moving. Um, I think um about the um relationship between multiple people in that space. So what you might do together as a group of people in a car, um, as two or four or five people in a car together, and the experience that you share that's kind of made possible by that car and maybe where you're going from and going to. And then probably the most important one is the relationship between sort of you and the car as one thing, and then the outside world, which might be other people um in the space around the car, or the kind of wider environment around the car, or other digital things, like you know, things that you want to find out, things you want to connect to, your home and other person and their device. Those are kind of like the three orbits of experience as I think about them.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I'm not I'm not trying to be funny, but are we just trying to get the car to do too much and really just what people want is an car to get them from A to B, and there's been like this fetishization within the automotive industry who've looked at you know service service-driven companies, which is essentially what you know Apple has become, and have gone, oh fuck, we'd like some of the the the annual recurring revenue from from providing services that we otherwise wouldn't get if we just sold them and car. Um I don't know, like is is there something to to just desperately trying to get the car to do too much when actually all people want is a safe, quiet, comfortable, and perhaps mildly emotionally engaging way to get them from you know their apartment building to the fucking supermarket?
SPEAKER_01I think there's I think it's a really good question, and I think I think there's a few points in that. I think the first thought I keep having is has this happened because we've experienced a sort of tech revolution and the way we're all living our lives changed has changed because it's all mediated by screen and we kind of we can't divorce ourselves from that now, even when we're in a moving, you know, object, and where we really should, those of us behind the wheels should be focusing on the road. Or did it happen partly because something in many cultures changed where driving became heavily regulated, driving became um kind of quite tedious, driving became chore-like rather than pleasure-like, um, driving became about sort of duty and monotony rather than sort of excitement and you know, and possibility. That the most of the journeys you took in the car were no longer about the adventure you were having in the car where you're going, it was just about having to get from one place to another that was just out of necessity, and there was traffic and you were stopped more often than you were moving, and uh you you couldn't possibly speed anymore because there's cameras and things everywhere, so it became so sort of dull and monotonised that then the human brain did what it does and gone, and we sort of went, I'm bored of this, I don't really need to focus much on it, so I can do something else. And once upon a time that something else was listened to the radio, but now it's like, Oh, find some information now, phone a friend, do this other thing, sort out all my life admin, blah blah blah blah blah blah. Um, I think that's that's one question, but then the other question that you raised is do people just want, are we trying to add too much to the car when all people want is simplicity? And I think that's really interesting in the context of say slate, where slates come and been this, oh people like, wow, what a breath of fresh air. And then it was like, Oh shit, twenty five thousand dollars for a truck with wind up windows. Um, yeah, no things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, I this is I'm definitely not talking about slate. I think Definitely not talking about slate. I have very kind of conflicted feelings about that product, and I'm not entirely sure that it's gonna survive because it doesn't it doesn't actually meet I don't think the contemporary definition of minimum viable product actually as as as a as a as a as a car or a small truck, right? I think you're asking people to actually invest too much time and energy and effort into making it what they want it to be. Like when I say and car, it's like the modern day equivalent of of of a W124200E, right? Like you you buy it off the lot and it literally does absolutely everything that you need it to do. Like the radio is there, like it it it it's it's feature complete, but it's not trying to take the piss and sell you a whole bunch more functionality to extract and and continue to extract value from you. Um sorry, I I've now kind of lost the thread. I I don't think slate is the answer, but I'm also curious. Well, you know, it's interesting that a brand like Dacia continues to kind of go from strength to strength on you know the offering of a car that meets the definition of minimum viable car, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And that we have data where we can see people moving out of much more expensive brands, much more expensive vehicles into datches. Right. Um partly because it represents a sort of smart not having the piss taken out of you, sort of um positioning. It's like you know, you can be rich and have a dacia, and you're like, oh you're smart because you're not being taken the piss out of you by a premium brand who's asking you to pay for heated seats. Um and it but but also that I think to what you said before, it's like a dacia is kind of easy to consume and not annoying because it's not going to bombard you with things, um, and it's just going to do the job, as you've said, of ANCAR.
SPEAKER_00I I I think there's also something in like what what permission do car brands actually have to deliver an experience, to deliver the kind of all-encompassing experience that you have. Like, and and and historically, frankly speaking, car companies don't have done, apart from a couple of outliers and Lexus being one of them, have done an absolutely atrocious job of building the kind of trust in the consumer that says, Yes, I want you to be a main entry point for a digital experience through which I can coordinate my life. I mean, you've been to a car dealer, you've had to deal with a service department. Like, the likelihood that I'm gonna want any of those people involved in delivering my laundry and making sure that I've got enough cat litter is slim to none.
SPEAKER_01Um which rather begs the question like where where is the industry going and what's it trying to do? That's a job, isn't it? That was your job. I'm not allowed to say that on this podcast because that would be always telling, you know, trade secrets. No, I mean I I I see my position on this on this podcast as kind of like provocateur and uh you know sort of occasional sort of commenter and commentator and sense maker, but you know, I I'm just I think we're in a bit of a hole. I think we're in a bit of a hole where we have we seem to have be at the thin end of the wedge. We've got very, very, very expensive products for the most part, which in the state that the world is in, people increasingly both can't afford and don't see as offering value. Right. Um, I think there's a contingent of enthusiasts, probably which we would count our uh ourselves among who said we are now past peak car. I mean, look at our respective what we choose to own. Um, you know, uh the yeah, I know I've got a defender. Um the the the three series is less annoying than the defender, right? The three series is ten years older, it's inherently less annoying to use, right? And the defender doesn't do well, other than obviously go through fields if I needed to, which I can't, um, but um which I don't but the defender doesn't do anything sort of technically as a kind of car on the road, or for me as a person that the three series doesn't. So there's this kind of whole thing of like, okay, we're past Pete Car. And then the vision just seems to be gone. Um, I watched Christopher But's amazing um video on the BMW i8 the other day. If you haven't seen it, go and watch it. It is so good, go and watch all his videos because they're phenomenal and he puts a lot of effort into them, and they're lovely production values, and you learn things you didn't know. And I keep looking at i-8s. I went on the original launch of the i-8 in the UK in 2014, and Chris summed it up where he said this was a time when the future was exciting and the future was going to be better, and the future could look different, but that different could still be potent and could still be attractive, and that future was powered by different means and made of different materials. And it's almost like we're in this sort of I call it the industry's Concord moment where going faster, going further, going in new ways seems to now be off the agenda because you know the A8 is a great example of we got burn, you know, it was maybe a bit too ahead of its time. Um, and now we're at the point where brands like Audi bring the new Valari, which has a whatever it has.
SPEAKER_00Back of Ingolstadt.
SPEAKER_01A V8 to V10, and it's like, ah, quick, that gives someone a nice noisy fast car because we just go back to what we're good at. Where's the vision for the future?
SPEAKER_00So I um read recently an interesting, it was a transcript of an interview between a chap called Derek Thompson and a Canadian philosopher by the name of Agnes, I'm gonna say Kaya or Callard. Um and she's put forward this this sort of theory of the unicontext, and I'm I'm gonna fucking butcher it, but even in butchered form, I think it might serve our conversation quite well. Once upon a time, our context was um our village, right, or our town. Yeah, and then with the advent of radio, our context became you know, um, anglophone countries around the world. Like we could listen into what was going on everywhere in America, yeah. Same for francophones, it telephones, you know, yeah, whatever. But our context was still limited to places that had some kind of shared cultural context by virtue of the language. Now we live in this visually driven age, you know, kind of image and and and and moving image, where we can basically treat the entire world as our living room.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um everything is shared immediately. Um it's immediately visually legible, but it is stripped of the context from which that image came. And so what that means is that when you're creating something to kind of make a disturbance in this new world, you're looking for the identity that is going to resonate to a global audience rather than drawing from the very specific cultural context which from from which your brand, because we're talking about brand and design objects here, might have once sprung. So you're losing kind of that sense of nuance, that sense of kind of cultural specificity that once made objects interesting, that it once made objects evidently not from here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Whereas we now live in a world where you know the first thing that we see is, I don't know, like premium minimal as an identity, Ferrari Luce. We don't see something that is so evidently born of Fiorano and Marinello and you know the Autostrada and right? It Ferrari has just been flattened into a globally legible EV blanc.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I think you're seeing that happen across the automotive industry. I think you're seeing you're seeing it happen in in culture generally.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, across segments, it's not just auto.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01But I think at the same time you also see this increasing clamour for.
SPEAKER_00Hello. Oh, hello, can you hear me? Yes, yes, I can hear you. Sorry, I thought that was I I thought I just had like some massive mic drop moment, and you're like, fuck, I don't know where to go from here.
SPEAKER_01No, no, no, no, no. I was just gonna say, I think it's what I'm I'm reflecting on is um that at the same time you can see an evident clamour for specificity, you can see a clamour for um localness, wrong, wrong word, but locality in some and and sort of specifics. Um you can see the kind of you know the the desire, I think, among many consumers for authenticity, and authenticity inherently probably comes from roots and culture and what made you you, which relates to kind of the place that you were from. And I think we also see at the same time that there is a deglobalization. What's that?
SPEAKER_00And and I want to and I wanna and I want to use the example, like so. I went to a part of Sydney near where I grew up, actually. Um, and I uh you know make no bones about the fact that I grew up in a you know in a wealthy, privileged, you know, part of part of Sydney. Um and once upon a time I could go to this area of Sydney, which is called Mossman, and I knew kind of at a cellular level how um women, particularly of a certain age, would be dressing and how they would be looking physically. Um because my mother was actually or is still a manifestation of that. Right. So what I saw yesterday were like Kylie and Chris Jenner lookalikes. Like there's there's been this fascinating homogenization of faces achieved through plastic surgery. And I'm just like, wow. Wow, you you you there used to be an aesthetic that was very much attributable to an Australian woman of a certain age, of a certain income bracket. Yeah. Now they all look like they've dropped out of like real housewives.
SPEAKER_01I think this is an interesting observation because obviously while when I was talking about that specificity of origin and the search for authenticity and stuff, what I was actually thinking about was food. I was thinking about I was thinking about food culture, I was thinking about food culture, particularly in Europe, as I've experienced it from all over Europe, and how now the sort of origin of ingredient or the way that dishes that come from a certain territory or region have been sort of reinvented or are kind of celebrated in a way where maybe once they were seen to be kind of ashamed of because they were sort of, if you like, you know, just quote unquote peasant food. They were for kind of like you know working people, and now it's been elevated. And you see that a lot, you see it in Scandinavia massively, you know, the whole way of like you know, you can make an argument, a tentative argument for the fact that Copenhagen and its success grew up on that food scene that came out of it.
SPEAKER_00You see it globally, and it is an identity. I would argue, yeah, right? Yeah. Umce upon a time, it was Alice Waters at Shea Panice in California, right? She was considered to be like the vanguard of like the local food movement. And then in the intervening, I don't know what it, whatever it is, like fifty fuck, it must be 50 years, 60 years, like local food is now a commonly legible, global identity around which people can kind of orient themselves.
SPEAKER_01But I still think there's a good proportion of the world in the car buying sense that is like buys into the idea of I want a French car or I want a British car or I want a Swedish car or I want an Italian car. And to lurch somewhat, if we could, onto Luce. How do we decode that perhaps one of the problems with the Luce is that inherently one of its problems is it has an identity which is far more California tech, sort of consumer tech driven than it is Italian driven?
SPEAKER_00Because I think like Luxo Tech premium minimum, right? Globally legible identity. Like how what what does an authentically and could only have ever been born of Italy EV look like? Like how, you know, and and does that then register with like a consumer in China? Is that then going to register with a consumer in California? I don't know. We won't know because they haven't made it. They've no again, they've just made this bit of blancs. Um with with zero sense of character, really. I think that's what I find so fascinating about it. There's there's there's really nothing about it that says to me, oh well, this is like an intrinsically Italian product born of its place. It could have come from anywhere.
SPEAKER_01It's interesting to think about character and identity as kind of two distinct but kind of interrelated things. And I think to kind of come back to what I was saying, I think one of the one of the things I have um with the Luce that uh I kind of wanted to discuss with you is I really struggle with this whole argument about oh, it's rubbish. Oh well, I'm I'm paraphrasing, but it's rubbish because it's an EV, and I know that intelligent critics are not sort of saying that, but there's still an undercurrent of it's like this because it's an EV and it's therefore not a proper Ferrari and it's therefore crap, and I think it it it's it's it's entirely to do with the identity and the character of the product and how that fits with your um sort of vision of what a Ferrari is or what a Ferrari could be or even a future Ferrari, and it being kind of very much divorced from that because it kind of lacks any sort of strong identity or sense of what it is trying to be, and that's nothing really to do with whether it's electric or not.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I would I would the distinction that I would make here is like the identity is EV, the identity is kind of um you know, technology product, the the character is I think what we're circling here, yeah. Which is what is it that you know takes its identity as an A V, takes its identity as a technology product, and then imbues it with something that is unmistakably kind of of its place and of its culture and that's what it that's what it lacks.
SPEAKER_01And do you think this is a massive sort of this is conjecture clearly, but do you think that that's happened because its designers and I actually want to circle back on that point, but it's designers, it's headline designers are not of that culture and that place.
SPEAKER_00I mean I wanna I I I kind of want to search for historical precedent of designers who have absolutely grokked a kind of a time and place of a culture that was not their own and and and made it work. I mean there are probably many. Um I don't so with that in mind, I don't think those things are necessarily mutually exclusive. I don't think just because you're Mark Newson and Johnny Ive that you couldn't design a product that is and could only come from one time and place.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But I think designers like Johnny Ive and Mark Newson are probably the exemplars of like designers working with identity as opposed to designers working with place. Like the iPhone, I mean, we know it says designed by Apple in California. It could have, you know, I mean it could have come from anywhere. Yeah. Right? Yeah. You look at Mark Newson's, I mean, Mark Newson's early product, and you know, we're talking like 1980s product, definitely had a sense of Australian about it. Alienness, yeah. Yeah, like he definitely played with Australian culture and and and surf culture and what have you. But you look at Mark Newson's output from I don't know, the past few decades, and it's like, yeah, like I I was talking to a a another design strategist friend last night, Adam Thompson, really lovely guy, because he was trying to he, you know, he's like, why is it that all EVs look the same? And you know, this conversation about identity versus character came up. And I was recounting to him being, I think I was in a in Daikenyama T site. It's a uh there's an amazing bookshop in Tokyo. They've got this incredible design section, and there's a there was a book that had been published about the the œuvre, because it was definitely an œuvre. Was this the level at which they were operating? They produced an œuvre of work. Um an interior architecture firm, I think it was. And this this firm is the firm to get. For your jet, for your yacht, for your house in Mykonos, your house in the Japanese ski fields and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. You're fuck flat in Paris. And I said to him, I couldn't tell where one project began and one ended because it was just like wall-to-wall ebonized wooden fucking beige boucle. Right?
SPEAKER_01It's what they want, Drew. It's what it's what the global super rich you know.
SPEAKER_00And why is that? Because it's globally legible and understandable. It's become the international standard of quote unquote good taste.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I find this entire topic fascinating, and I could talk at length about it, but I've just looked up and I'm like, we're 47 minutes in. And I said I wanted to uh before we started recording, I said let's talk about you sang at S124, the Luce, the Nuvelari, uh the Range Rover GT that got unveiled uh shown today, actually, as we record this, and then anything else. Um so I think we'll let's get on with it. Yeah, let's try and knock through a few more of those in in the next 10 minutes or so so we don't you know bore people to tears. Um I don't know if I want to say any more about the luce because there's not much more that I I can think of to say that hasn't been said by um a million commentators, and we're about a month a month after them. Um suffice to say that I still find myself somewhat confused by it.
SPEAKER_00I I just think it's a massive miss. I think it's it's an absolutely massive miss. I think it's um to the extent that I actually really care about Ferrari as a brand, and to be clear, the only Ferraris I really care about are the ones that everybody else hates. Hates you know, like a you know 400i. 400i. 456, you know, like just give me aone hates a 456.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, true, true, true, true.
SPEAKER_00Everybody most people hate the 400i.
SPEAKER_01Um but no, I know what I wanted to say. Sorry, I mentioned a bit, sorry to cut across you, but just a thought, and I don't really it's just a kind of throwing out brain fart, not a sort of strong uh question, but one of the things that fascinates me about the Luce is obviously we have, we do, many people listening will work in the industry. Um, a car is not generally a product of a couple of people or a handful of people. In general, there have been examples, but I don't believe, um, and I think anyone who works in the industry doesn't believe when they stop to think about it, that this is um Johnny Ive, Mark Newsom, and the handful of people in the Love From office um doing a Ferrari. There have got to have been hundreds of people, studio engineers, designers, engineers, back in Marinello happened working on this. So what happened because we went wrong. Yeah, exactly. Did everyone just go, yeah, we're just gonna push the battery trace. We have to conform to Mark and Johnny's vision, go for it.
SPEAKER_00Um can you imagine being a clay modeller? Like you're walking out at the end of the night, you switch the lights off, you walk in in the morning, like Italians who probably you know sucking on your fag.
SPEAKER_01In one hand, fag on the other.
SPEAKER_00Switch on the lights, and you're like, fuck, she's still a bit of a manter, isn't she?
SPEAKER_01Like I mean, this does happen in cafes. We've probably both been there where everybody walks past and everybody's going, Oh fucking hell. And it's like, are we are we really are we really is that getting signed off? It's and everyone's like gritted teeth, and it's like this kind of like you know, the elephant in the room, but no one dares talk about it. So maybe it's just a constant sort of that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'd just I'd I'd love to know what happened culturally, yeah. You know, and I mean this is this is sort of where a lot of my work focuses these days is kind of helping leaders understand and work with the culture of their organizations, right? I would love to know what happened culturally within Ferrari that allowed this to yeah, that that allowed this to happen and and for them to seemingly be so surprised.
SPEAKER_01I mean, hey, it would make a great book if there's a group of people that you know when they No no no Johnny and Mark have written the book. I think they've written three books, haven't they? Yeah, I was gonna say.
SPEAKER_00There will be no further books. Alright. Um where do you want to go next, Joe? The the the the Range Rover GT or the or the Nuv?
SPEAKER_01Um let's do the Nuvelare because I think it's a um I think it's an interesting contrast to the Chay. Um Alright, hit me. Do you want it? Well um I'm very uh thoughts in no no particular order. Um I was quite a fan of the concept C when I saw it in Munich. I thought it was fairly exquisite. It is fair to say there were one or two people, and there were seem to be a handful of them that were like, mmm, doesn't really move anything on. Um the I would say the 90% consensus is oh, this is really exquisite, it's very well done, takes Audi back to what Audi should be, which is this kind of technical, perfectly refined, um you know, and fundamentally perfectly executed object. Um bit surprising that the Nuvolaris appeared so soon. It obviously borrows a Lamborghini package quite heavily, and I think in some of the, for instance, side profile shots, which is quite hard to find, um, it it it it doesn't look like that helps it. Um I'm I'm gritting my teeth. Teeth, yes, um for the but but it does seem to sort of broadly transpose the vision shown in Concept C um to a road-going car, um, which is very quick. Um I know it's a limited production sort of hypercar, if you will, or supercar, but I wonder whether it was already in progress when um Massimo arrived and whether he's just done a bit of tweakery on it.
SPEAKER_00I I I think the thought that just occurred to me, and it is a thought that has just occurred to me, so I take it with a grain of salt. Um I wonder to what extent this speaks to a level of panic inside Audi at just how fucked they've been from a design perspective for quite a long period of time. That they've gone, okay. We've got Concept C broadly people love it. I personally really appreciated it, especially I mean, the interior looks absolutely phenomenal. I mean, obviously, I haven't seen it up close because I live on the other side of the world these days. Um, you know, people quibble about the fact people quibble about the fact that it doesn't move the game on. I don't think Audi needed to move the game on. I think Audi needed to like basically throw everything off the table, like reset to known territory where it knew it was good so that it could build from that. And I think Concept C did that extremely well. Now, if you had kind of the time and the space, I mean, natural next evolution from that is okay, like how do we translate this into a volume product?
SPEAKER_01So and everyone assumed that that volume product was going to be the concept C as a kind of new generation of TT, if you will, fourth generation TT, which is gonna be shared with the electric came and boxed it because it was assumed to be on the same platform. Right.
SPEAKER_00So you you establish a volume production halo product, yeah, right, from which everything else in the range can then distill you know its its take on the language. Instead, they've gone for what a a low volume reskin of a Lamborghini. Uh I think they're producing what like 400 of them. Yeah. Um which in my eyes has undone so much of the good work of the Concept C because it looks rushed. It looks rushed in a number of different ways. The proportion the proportion of the Lamborghini underneath the the sort of the Concept C skin, it it it it looks like it breaks in the middle, and I think it was in our group chat with Michael Bonofsky that I pointed out that at launch, at the launch of the concept, it was impossible to find shots of it in side profile and uh dare anybody to go and find a side profile image of the Nuvelari and tell me that it is a piece of design that hangs together particularly well.
SPEAKER_01I mean I think I'm I'm sorry to interject, I'm not quite where you are. I think it's I think it's heavy, um, and I I kind of want to see it. I have this rather unfortunate history of looking at pictures of Audis Um and calling them as duds. Um I did it with the A5, the original, and then being like, oh no, that's really quite impressive actually. Um when I see it on the road. So I'm not really willing to call it. I I am I am in agreement with you looking at its night profile, but I think from certain angles um it actually works pretty well.
SPEAKER_02My but my my pretty well pretty well is not good enough, right?
SPEAKER_01Well, this is what I was getting. So this is what I was getting to. I feel what what what's I find a bit uh about it is that it I feel that they've tried to take a leaf from a playbook that's sort of uh when was it, 2007, where they were like, right, um gonna do a supercar. Um back then it was the R eight, and the R eight really did change the game. The R eight did share with a Lamborghini of the time, but it looked nothing like the Lamborghini. It didn't really give away that it was a Lamborghini, it was um very authentically an Audi and a sort of a vision of what an Audi um supercar could be that could beat or take on cars like the 9-11, but do it in its own way, it didn't it didn't try to be a 9-11 or you know um whatever, and it was very successful and it worked as this amazing Halo car, I think, for Audi at that point. Um and that car had like a V8 engine and then latterly a V10, and this um it's really bad because I didn't check before we came on, but this Nuvolari also has what is it? Is it V10?
SPEAKER_00I think I think it's a V10, I think it's the tet the Lamborghini Terrible, the Tem Tem Temo Terrible Terra Remerario.
SPEAKER_01Yep. But what what I suppose what I suppose uh my my takeaway, what I'm rambling around trying to point get to is that playbook, which is inherently mid-2000s, is it still valid to do a quote unquote um low volume Halo car that sets the sort of uh vision for both the design language, what the brand wants to be, and then bring it with that engine. And it's like I bring it like compare and contrast again to the sort of to the i8, which only came a few years after the the R8. I don't feel like it fits with my view that Audi should be the premium brand that is about pro progress, progressiveness, and progress through sort of the tech and the design. It feels like a as you say, maybe a rushed, panicked, ah, we need to kind of have a brand Halo product, let's do that again. And the question is, is that again the right thing for now?
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, no, it doesn't it doesn't feel like it because I think what what what Concept C heralded was a um a reawakening of Vorsprung durch technik in my mind. Yeah um and as I quipped to Andy Pelane, uh friend and former coach of mine that you know actually the the Nuvelari is a bit more Vorsprung Durchfall. Um it's it's it's a it it's something that has very effectively captured 15 minutes of fame for Audi. Um I don't think it does a huge amount in terms of helping the broader market understand oh like Audi's back on its game as a manufacturer of like exceptionally well considered vehicles that are suited for the times in which we find ourselves.
SPEAKER_01You know, and so fascinating to consider that that point relative to what you said earlier about you know that the the the you just said the 15 minutes of fame, the Instagram moment. But you know, when Audi was really successful, yes, you know, they did have attention-grabbing products, you know, that that did change the game, that major draw drop, the C5A6, the first T T, etc. But what really, really defined Audi was that they were incredibly considered products that worked phenomenally well in day-to-day life for years and years? They were sort of slow burn, they were a bit like Volvo, you know, they just fitted in and did things in an exceptionally well considered, uh well-executed, high-quality way. And what my reflection relative to that and what you've just said is is the problem for a brand like Audi now that the world is just such short attention span that you know, are there enough people to appreciate or ways of communicating that we can bring this product which is about longevity and depth and deep development and so forth? Um, or is that moment gone?
SPEAKER_00Well no, it's all about I think it it very much depends on who the people within a brand like Audi are trying to capture and what they're trying to capture. You know, are they is it is it really about getting the looks and the likes and and capturing that 15 minutes of of fame, or are there a bunch of people within the organization that truly are dedicated to delivering on the promise of a return to deeply considered kind of functional and aesthetically pleasing design that something like the concept C heralds? Yeah, um, but which is a manifestation of deep engineering and design competence? Yeah. Does Audi even have that anymore?
SPEAKER_01Well, uh there's two there's two key questions there, isn't there? It's like, does Audi and the Volkswagen group have that level of you know, in a in a post-PEC era, that level of attention to detail, that sort of deep quality, that sort of and we're in a trying to compete with Chinese development cycles. Is that is that sort of depth of development and engineering competence, is that actually provable out? But I think the second thing is when you talk about who you're trying to speak to, is that audience still there? Right. I'm only looking at the UK market when I say this, but people will be or people listening from the UK will be aware, people from China perhaps, you know, of the kind of cherry group. But here in the UK we have this huge um proliferation of um particularly JQ and Amada products, um, which come from the cherry brand and now cherries here itself. And the you know, there's this joke in the UK that I think we've talked about it before that the the JQ7, particularly, which uh for a few months has been on and off the best-selling car, Timu Range Rover it to some degree squint and it has a sort of big evoke quality about it. But the reason that that brand is succeeding is to do with a cost and value equation, and it offers an awful lot for not a lot, and so if you compare it to say an equivalent Volkswagen like the Tiguan, um, someone quoted me recently that you know to take a Tiguan for three years now, a mid-high spec Tiguan, you wanna you're gonna put £3,000 down and then pay about £500 a month over three years. They governed JQ, which most people believe has better tech and will have you can have as a hybrid with longer range than the Volkswagen, you're gonna put £2,000 down and pay £299 a year. Right. Uh sorry, a month. So in a world of cost of living crisis, you're like, well, you know, to £200 a month is a lot. But the other thing is people are like, and it's a brand I've not heard of, but so what? After two or three years, I'm gonna get rid of it, it's not gonna be my problem. So we've moved to this kind of throwaway approach.
SPEAKER_00But but this is the thing, I think the definition of and car is now this. Like it's changed, and and coming right back to the conversation we were having at the very beginning is are we trying to get the car to do too much? Like, are we trying to get the car to do too much from the point of view of like turning it into the endpoint for a whole bunch of connected services that people just won't trust car brands to actually deliver for them? That's on the one hand, right, on the sort of the the technology side of it, but as enthusiasts, you know, as people who are deeply steeped in the history and lore of this industry and you know have arguably lived through the best times and now find ourselves in the end times, like uh are we trying to get brands to do too much these days? Because actually, ANCAR is not a C5A6, ANCAR is not a W124, ANCAR is a fucking Timu Range Rover that does the job just fine, and I don't really give a shit about what happens to it in three years' time because the finance company will take it off me and I'll get another ANCAR, JQ, whatever.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. 100%. And and I I find it incredi no, I find it incredibly difficult in terms of wow, we've we've we can't say to people, no, don't buy that. Because it I I understand why people are buying it, but to take a bit of a left turn, there's just this sort of whole sustainability question and equation in my head that then pops up, which is like sits around the the sustainability of the model, the sustainability of being you know not being being able to continue.
SPEAKER_00I'm sorry, that the Chinese did not start this. No, no, no, I'm not saying it's the Chinese as far as but it's also been a problem, and by that I mean it's been a problem in the industry for a long time. Like brands that once upon a time held themselves to sit within a particular segment of the market went, ooh, I want I want some of that volume product. Oh, I want some of that volume from lower down in the market. How am I gonna do it? I'm going to produce a car that looks like a smaller version of what we charge an awful lot of money for. Doesn't really matter what's underneath it. Um, and doesn't really matter what happens to the brand because we're gonna make a shit ton of money. Here's looking at you, Jaguar Land Rover and the Evoke. Right? JLR already produced the Timu Range Rover, it's called the Evoke. They set the pattern for everybody else, right?
SPEAKER_01No comment Fair. But I I think no, I think you can talk about it with any of these brands. You know, it started with the C. You can talk about it with Mercedes and the A class. Mercedes and the A class. You can talk about it with Audi and like the A1 and the A3 and things. You're right.
SPEAKER_00Of the car as a consumable.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. I I I I there's one final point on which I would like to wrap up, actually. Um, and that is um for actually it was only people on YouTube who hated us for this, and uh we're not doing YouTube anymore. Um, because the editing was just really exhausting. Um we published a video a long time ago now, it feels like, uh, about the Tesla Cybertruck. Yeah. And is it our most watched video? It is absolutely our most watched video, and I think it's the only video for which I ever the only thing, I think, for which I've ever received something approaching a death threat, um, which was amusing. I mean, apart from that fuck with in high school. Um, but um there is an article in Bloomberg this morning saying that the Cybertruck is on track to be a bigger failure than Joe. Uh what what is what is held up as the biggest failure that the automotive industry has ever seen?
SPEAKER_01Now you're putting me on the spot.
SPEAKER_00Um like a DeLorean or um Los American Heritage had a big vagine for a grill, although it was described as a yoke for a horse. The um the the the the the the I can picture it and I can't remember its ruddy name. Um named after the son of the founder of the company. The Edsel. Oh the Edsel.
SPEAKER_01Oh the Edsel.
SPEAKER_00Yes, it it's going it's it's it's it's it's a bigger failure than the Edsel.
SPEAKER_01How many have they sold this year?
SPEAKER_00Oh like seven thousand, I think. Through to May.
SPEAKER_01How many did they how many did they tool up for to make a year?
SPEAKER_00A quarter of a million a year. Wow. Um I think Tesla's doing its earnings call right now, actually.
SPEAKER_01So to we haven't we haven't we haven't talked about Tesla.
SPEAKER_00I mean we could uh let's let's not no no no all I want to say is to all the haters we were right you were wrong. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think we were quite measured about it in my mind.
SPEAKER_00I probably need to listen back to it and remember how you know we're certainly more measured than we were about things on this show, but that's worrying. It's well, it's because the industry doesn't pay me anymore. Um it still does me for now, and I still want them to, you know. That that that that's that's why I do all the effing and blinding, and I just watch your pained expression on the other side of the camera. Um this has been yeah you go on. Go on.
SPEAKER_01You're more articulate on these sorts of things than me. So you know, it's better that you do the talking sometimes.
SPEAKER_00Well, this has been fun. Yeah, it has been fun. Um, and if for everybody who was expecting that this would be an hour-long digression on the Ferrari Luce, I'm sorry to have disappointed you, but um frankly, the luce ceased to be interesting uh to talk about about 10 minutes after it came out. Um so you know, we had to find some other interesting stuff to talk about. Um thank you so much for listening along. Um we had some absolutely beautiful feedback from the last episode, um and we love to receive it. Uh if you really is appreciated. Yeah, massively, massively. And um, we always kind of take people's commentary into account when we think about recording a new show. So if you'd like us to record a new show, send us commentary, make us feel good. Um but apart from that, thanks for listening. It's been a pleasure. Lovely to see you, Joe.
SPEAKER_01Love to see you too, Drew. Thanks. Let's do it again soon. Let's all right, bye bye, everyone. Goodbye. Just like rambling. Like I felt at times I was like, what am I trying to say?
