The Ferrari Purosangue, the LaFerrari, the Ferrari Monza SP1 and SP2, the Montblanc Stilema SP3, one of the finest pens ever made, and the Richard Mille RM UP-01 Ferrari, the thinnest watch in the world when it came out, at 1.75 mm thick. Flavio Manzoni is not a stylist, he is a genius. When he touches an object, it becomes timeless.
How do you keep innovating when your clients keep saying it was better before?
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
When I think of a Ferrari, I normally think of a sculpture in motion, a dynamic sculpture.
In ten years, will AI design Ferraris better than you?
To invent something, you don't need AI. You need imagination.
Who really designed this car, you or Jony Ive?
Born in a village in Sardinia where no cars are built, Flavio Manzoni first studied architecture. Today, he holds one of the most legendary jobs in the car industry: head of design at Ferrari. In 2001, Gianni Agnelli called him to save Lancia. In 2010, Ferrari lured him away from Volkswagen for a wild mission. For the first time, Ferrari would create a fully in-house design studio, complete and autonomous, after the unforgettable reign of the Pininfarina studio. In Maranello, Flavio Manzoni built the first Centro Stile Ferrari, the first in-house design studio. Nearly sixteen years later, his name is on more than 63 Ferraris. But in 2026, Flavio Manzoni faces the wildest challenge of his career: the first all-electric Ferrari. To design it, Ferrari does a second unthinkable thing: share the pen with Jony Ive, the designer of the iPhone. Welcome. Today, twenty minutes with the head of Ferrari design, Flavio Manzoni.
Do you remember the first car you drew as a child?
I must have been two, so I can't remember. I do remember: when I was in primary school, my father taught me perspective, intuitive perspective. I never forgot it, because it was like a revelation, you know. I had finally discovered how to represent reality. Before that, I made bad sketches, very strange ones, with nothing to do with reality. Perspective opened up a world of possibilities: projecting your own vision, your imagination onto a blank page.
You designed the LaFerrari, the Monza SP1 and SP2, the F12 Tour de France, the Purosangue. I would love to understand how a simple drawing becomes a myth. Are they myths? Yes, they are myths.
Someone may say so one day, in the next fifty years. But it is always about dreaming. Dreaming passionately.
You know, when you draw something, at a precise moment, you finish the drawing and you realize that's it, that's the one. That feeling?
Development times are quite long. We are talking three, even four years. So every day, you go through states where nothing works, then where everything feels right. You must always listen to your heart, not only to your mind, to sense whether your intuition rings true. I believe instinct can guide you to the right decisions. With the Monza, for example, as we said, the idea was to create the purest possible shape. Like a silhouette, like a fuselage. That is why we decided to pursue that idea of a very modern barchetta. Because the barchetta is pure. There is no roof. It is one simple monolithic shape. The question was also how to make it modern and not nostalgic. It is always the same problem: avoiding every form of nostalgia. Let's say that is the intention.
How do you keep innovating in a world where your clients keep saying it was better before?
It is a hard job, because in fact...
Yes, it is not really the best time for a designer to be bold and very brave. The motto is: 'Ferrari boldly redefines the limits of the possible.' We cannot look back. We have to look ahead to create something truly new. For example, if you take all the cars of Ferrari's heritage, we love them partly because they have the patina of the past. You see? Back then, they were seen as true masterpieces, because they were highly innovative. They are icons because they created a new paradigm. Never forget that. It is truly fundamental. There is a beautiful line by Erich Fromm: 'Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.' That is what creativity means to me. It is not repeating the signs of the past. Otherwise, to me, it is neither art nor design.
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Enzo Ferrari used to say that when you buy a Ferrari, you buy an engine, and you get the design and the bodywork for free. But today, who really wins? The engineers or the designer?
Well, that is a very old story. Let's not forget that Ferrari is also famous for the beauty and the design of its cars. I think there is no real winner, it is rather a win-win situation. The fact is that when we talk about design, to me, design is something deeply connected to technological innovation. It is a field where function and form have to come together like a marriage. There must be great harmony between the two. So design is an applied art. It is a very difficult equation in which both sides are essential. To me, it is impossible to design a car without engineers. It is a synergy.
With the Ferrari Luce, the brand is announcing an all-electric car. Historically, a Ferrari is an explosion of sound: a V12, a naturally aspirated V8, sounds, vibrations. How do you design emotion when you take the mechanics away?
We are not taking it away. It is a different technology. That is why we speak of addition, not transition. We are used to working with several different technologies. For example, we have launched several hybrid cars. We pushed the limits of performance with that combination: combustion engine and electric motor. So this is another chapter, a whole new story, a new product where design is intimately tied to technological innovation.
Do you remember your first day of work on this electric Ferrari?
The car was designed by two truly great designers, Jony Ive and Marc Newson, founders of the LoveFrom studio in San Francisco.
The men who designed the iPhone.
Exactly. So they need no introduction. The fundamental question was: how do we give this car a design language that is completely new and revolutionary, and that of course underlines the message? This is a completely new platform, and a new technology too. That calls for a different approach. When I talk about design, I am not talking about the line. The line is something else. It is when you treat the shape superficially. Design goes much deeper. So the decision was to find a way of drawing differently, with a radical design that follows no principle of car design, but something else entirely. That perspective from elsewhere, that outside eye, creates a shape that is totally unexpected. And besides, it is also a strong statement, because if you think about it, all the electric cars on the market today are not really innovative. In terms of shapes, they are not. They are conventional models, with a design language that comes from CAD. Which is strange, because normally... For example, I often use the example of the history of product design. There were moments when a disruptive technology created a burst of innovation. Take radios in the sixties, when there was a shift: the move from valves to transistors. Remember, the old radios looked like wooden furniture, and then they became something radically different, thanks to the work of the great Italian masters of design, like Zanuso, Munari or Castiglioni. They created objects that embody, in one way or another, the paradigm of modernity. That shows how a new technology should create a different approach. Yet most electric cars out there are conventional.
To create this electric Ferrari Luce, you turned to Jony Ive, the designer of the iPhone. I love my iPhone, but I would rather look at a Ferrari 12Cilindri. Aren't you afraid of creating a giant iPhone?
No, not a giant iPhone, but of course it follows certain stylistic codes. Their point of view was: 'We do not want to use any of the typical elements of the language of car design.' There are treatments and features that belong to a car designer's eye. In their minds, the object has to be very simple, monolithic and pure, with very simple surfaces. So it is a completely different mindset.
