A Chinese Car Brand Says It Hired A Top Ferrari Designer. Ferrari Wants A Name

Luxeed says it hired a former Ferrari chief designer. Ferrari’s China PR boss publicly challenged the claim by asking who that was.

Photo by: Huawei

Andrei Nedelea

By: Andrei Nedelea

Jun 15, at 12:53pm ET

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Luxeed says its Purosangue-like RX had input from a former Ferrari chief designer.
Ferrari’s China PR boss publicly challenged Luxeed to name the alleged ex-Ferrari designer.
The RX pairs Huawei tech with Chery manufacturing and could eventually reach Europe.

Chinese auto company Luxeed says its new SUV had direct input from an ex-Ferrari designer. The Italian supercar maker is pushing back.

Zhao Changjiang, Luxeed’s executive director and executive vice president, recently said in a Weibo post that the Huawei- and Chery-backed brand had been on a recruiting spree, snagging former BMW and Aston Martin chassis engineers, as well as an unnamed former Ferrari chief designer.

Now Ferrari’s China PR boss has publicly asked who exactly Luxeed is referring to, CarNewsChina reports. “I wanted to ask, what is the name of this former Ferrari chief designer?” Ingrid Sun, PR director for Ferrari China, wrote in a social media post that was later deleted, according to the outlet.

This could have been pure marketing fluff on Luxeed's part, since Ferrari has had the same chief design officer, Flavio Manzoni, since 2010. It could also be that the employee was a lower-level design lead at Ferrari rather than a head honcho like Manzoni. The controversy tracks with what we already know about Ferrari in that it has always been extraordinarily protective of its brand.

Gallery: Luxeed RX

Source: Huawei

If you look at the Luxeed RX, it’s undeniably similar in terms of its design and proportions to the Purosangue. From the side, it’s pretty much a dead ringer, although it is a different size and its front and rear fascias are quite different from the Ferrari’s. However, the overall design is still closer to the Purosangue than the other Chinese SUV that often draws Ferrari comparisons, the Xiaomi YU7.

The RX is 197.6 inches (5.02 meters) long and sits on a 118-inch (3-meter) wheelbase. The base variant comes with a single motor sending 371 hp to the rear wheels, while a dual-motor all-wheel-drive variant adds an additional drive unit up front, which adds 214 hp. More details like its battery pack size, range, and performance numbers will be revealed closer to the vehicle’s official debut in China this fall.

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Luxeed likely hopes the RX will follow in the footsteps of the immensely successful YU7, which received a whopping 200,000 pre-orders in the first three minutes after the order books opened in June of last year. There was initially a wait time of over 30 weeks to take delivery, but now that the order backlog has cleared, you can get one much quicker.

Luxeed plans to expand outside China into Europe, where several Chery brands are already present and finding success. Chery’s Jaecoo 7 SUV, for instance, was the UK’s best-selling new car in March, so Europeans are clearly not against buying something Chinese. And if it looks a little bit like a Ferrari, that probably doesn't hurt.