Enrico Galliera, the man who decided who got to buy a Ferrari for the last 16 years, is out weeks after the Luce — the company's first electric car — became one of the most mocked car launches in recent memory.
Ferrari's longtime marketing chief, Enrico Galliera, is leaving the company after 16 years — and the timing couldn't be louder. His departure was announced just weeks after the Luce, Ferrari's first fully electric car, became a punchline across the automotive world. The $640,000 EV — designed in part by former Apple design chief Sir Jony Ive — was compared to a Nissan Leaf, a vacuum cleaner, and an Apple product that nobody asked for. Ferrari's stock dropped 8% the day after the unveiling, wiping roughly $5.8 billion off the company's market value.
Ferrari's statement made no mention of the Luce. Instead, it said Galliera had "decided to embark on a new chapter in his professional journey — a decision shared with the company some time ago." CEO Benedetto Vigna praised him warmly. Galliera himself declined to comment beyond the official statement. Everyone played it diplomatically. But the timing speaks for itself.
Galliera was not a car guy by training. He studied economics and political science at the University of Parma, then spent 20 years at pasta giant Barilla — running trade marketing for Italy, then all of Europe. He joined Ferrari in 2010 as Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer, a role that turned out to be one of the most powerful and unusual in the auto industry.
His job, on paper, was marketing. In practice, he was Ferrari's gatekeeper. He personally decided which clients were allowed to purchase the company's most exclusive and limited-edition models. He built the famous allocation system where owning a Ferrari wasn't enough — you had to earn the right to buy the next one. That made him arguably the most influential person between Ferrari and its wealthiest customers.
"He has the gratitude of the entire Ferrari team and my personal best wishes for the future."
— CEO Benedetto Vigna, in Ferrari's official statementHe earned the nickname "Dr. No" — not because he was difficult, but because he enforced Ferrari's brand standards with an iron fist. Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian were famously blacklisted for modifying their Ferraris or failing to maintain them to the company's standards. That policy, controversial at the time, is now widely credited with protecting Ferrari's brand equity during a period when luxury was becoming democratized and diluted everywhere else.
Ferrari unveiled the Luce in May 2026. The name means "light" in Italian — a poetic choice for an EV. The reception was anything but poetic. The car's bubble-shaped body, designed with heavy input from Jony Ive's LoveFrom studio, struck many Ferrari fans as unrecognizable. British magazine Auto Express called it "the Apple car nobody wanted." The internet compared it to a Nissan Leaf. Former Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo, who built the modern Ferrari brand, said publicly: "I hope they take off the prancing horse from that car."
To be fair to Galliera, marketing chiefs don't design cars. The Luce's look was a product decision made at the highest levels of Ferrari. But in the luxury world, the line between product and brand is thin — and when a product damages the brand, someone at the brand level tends to take the fall.
Galliera will be replaced in July by Massimiliano Di Silvestre, former head of BMW Italy. Di Silvestre is a car industry veteran who will inherit both the Luce and the task of rehabilitating Ferrari's relationship with its most traditional customers — the ones who feel the Luce doesn't look like a Ferrari at all.
The broader question is whether the Luce's reception is a Ferrari problem or an industry problem. Lamborghini's CEO cited the Luce backlash as validation for canceling the brand's own EV plans. The incident has reignited the debate about whether supercar buyers actually want electric — or whether they want the theater of a combustion engine as much as the performance.
The bottom line: Enrico Galliera spent 16 years protecting Ferrari's brand with one of the most disciplined allocation and marketing strategies in the luxury world. Whether or not the Luce's design was his call, he is leaving in its wake. His successor inherits a brand in a moment of genuine identity tension — one that has to decide what a Ferrari is in the electric age, and whether its customers will follow wherever that answer leads.
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