Ferrari Luce hit a naming dispute after Mazda pulled the old Luce out of the archives
Ferrari Luce was supposed to mark the bright beginning of the Italians’ electric car era. Instead, the name is now generating more legal tension than motor noise. In early March, Mazda filed a trademark application for Luce in Japan, even though the model that once carried the name left production back in 1991. So Ferrari, on the eve of launching its first full electric model, found itself in the slightly awkward position of having to settle the rights to the past before it could sell the future.
Mazda revived a name the market had almost forgotten
According to CarExpert, Mazda filed for the Luce name in Japan only a few weeks after Ferrari unveiled the name in February and showed the public the new model’s interior. Mazda used Luce from the 1960s on its larger saloons, and the name stayed in production until 1991. That does not yet mean the Japanese brand is preparing a new Luce model, but protecting the trademark looks like a very deliberate move. The old name was sitting quietly on the shelf until Ferrari decided it was worth dusting off.
Luce is still set to take the stage, at least in Ferrari’s version of events
Ferrari confirmed in February that its first full electric car would be called Luce, the Italian word for light. According to Reuters, the full unveiling is due on 25 May in Rome, and the interior was designed by LoveFrom’s Jony Ive and Marc Newson. That part of the story felt unmistakably Ferrari, plenty of elegance, plenty of ambition and almost no exterior views.
Then the tone shifted. Early reports gave the impression that Mazda might simply snatch the Luce name away from Ferrari. But on 17 March, Ferrari said it holds rights to the Ferrari Luce trademark through an international registration, and that its prior searches did not uncover any active conflicting claims. That does not mean the dispute has evaporated, but the idea of a rushed renaming now looks rather less certain. Most likely, the real tug of war concerns the Japanese market, not the whole world.
Naming disputes are nothing exotic in the car industry
The fuss over car names stopped being surprising a long time ago. In 2024, Alfa Romeo had to swap Milano for Junior after the original name sparked legal and political trouble in Italy because the car was built in Poland. The same logic applies here. A good name carries real value, especially when a brand wants to build the start of an entirely new era around it.
These days the arguments are not only about batteries, software and range. Sometimes a grand product plan gets tripped up by something as simple as a name that somebody else never quite forgot. That says quite a lot about the market. New models arrive quickly, but old rights move with the serene confidence of things that know they have time on their side.
