Ferrari Luce Can’t Hide Its Gigantic Windscreen Wipers

We usually don’t talk about camouflaged prototypes of a car that has already been officially revealed. In fact, it’s rare for an automaker to keep the disguise even after a model’s premiere. It’s been more than a week since the Luce broke cover, yet Ferrari still hasn’t removed all the camouflage from this prototype undergoing last-minute testing.

Spotted by Derek Photography on the streets of Italy, the Luce no longer wears the breadvan-like camouflage we kept seeing in the lead-up to the model’s unveiling at the end of May. Strangely, there’s still a thin strip of disguise left, which has the exact opposite effect by making Maranello’s new five-door hatchback stand out even more.

While the overall design has sparked intense debate across the Internet, one detail has largely been overlooked in discussions surrounding the Luce’s unconventional look: the odd windshield wipers. Aside from having absolutely massive arms, they rest vertically and stick out more than they probably should. They weren’t as obvious in the press photos because of the blacked-out A-pillars, but they’re clearly much more noticeable on this car.

Why The Ferrari Luce Has Strange Wipers

Ferrari adopted this setup in the name of aerodynamic efficiency. It spent more than five years fine-tuning the body to make it as slippery as possible. Engineers ran around 6,000 CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulations and spent 250 hours testing scale models in the wind tunnel. Another 80 hours were dedicated to optimizing the body on a full-size car.

We’re told that “every detail of the car was refined” to achieve the lowest drag coefficient of any Ferrari road car to date. The Luce has a Cd of 0.254, and the unusual wiper placement contributed to that impressively low figure. Still, there’s no denying the windshield wipers stand out, even on a car that already has a striking appearance.

Photos by: SEAT

Photos by: SEAT

SEAT Did It Better?

But the Luce is far from the first production car to use this setup. Two examples that immediately spring to mind come from SEAT, the Spanish arm of the Volkswagen Group. The 2004 Altea tucked its wipers neatly behind a black trim piece that stretched the full height of the A-pillars and continued across the cowl to form a “U” shape.

Launched a year later and designed by the same talented Walter de Silva, the 2005 Leon didn’t feature the “U” piece, yet its windshield wipers were still less visible than those of the Ferrari Luce. They appeared to be tucked beneath the A-pillars, giving the Golf-related hatchback an impressively clean look.

The Tesla Cybertruck’s enormous mono wiper also rests vertically, and it’s just about as discreet as the Luce’s dual wipers.

Photo by: Derek Photography

Motor1’s Take: I may be geeking out over something as frivolous as windshield wipers when the whole car looks the way it does. However, they become impossible to ignore once you notice they’re fully exposed and sit upright at the edges of the windshield. Will that be a turnoff for people who are dead set on buying a Luce? Probably not.

Come to think of it, Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna recently said money is already pouring into the company’s bank accounts. There’s “strong interest, including from new clients,” and “we’ve already received bank transfers; clients who were there [at the reveal event] want it.”