Pagani: Lamborghini’s Biggest Mistake

In the early hours of a Monday in August 1911, Vincenzo Perugia sits huddled on a dimly lit staircase in the Louvre. His face is drenched with sweat as he quickly removes his white coat and wraps it around a small painting. A painting that is not supposed to have a work that he believes belongs to Italy, not France. What he takes out through the back doors of the Louvre is the Mona Lisa, an Italian painter, Da Vinci's Renaissance masterpiece. This is not just any painting. It's the painting. Lisa del Gioconda's stunning portrait is widely regarded as one of the greatest works of art of all time, and that fame is largely due to Vincenzo's theft, which caused the world to take a new approach to painting. paint.

What the world saw when he returned to France two years later was that smile. A smile that was the result of Da Vinci's dedication to learning both science and art. Knowledge of his facial muscles guided her hands to paint his elusive smile. The painting would be one of the largest gatherings of art and science in the world. Almost a century later, a machine would grace the cobblestone streets of Italy. Again it was a combination of engineering and poetry. The creation of a man who crossed great oceans, fought his way from humble beginnings and took on the supercar titans of the world.

What he created would be an orchestra powered by 12 cylinders, a beautiful sculpture made of composites. The Pagani Zonda was a modern masterpiece, a supercar that stood on its own as Lamborghinis became stale and old and Ferraris became clinical and boring. Pagani Zonda spread his colorful painting through the streets of Italy and brought Modena back to life. This is the story of a revolutionary performance by a true virtuoso. A story spun in carbon fiber and 95 octane. This is the story of Horacio Pagani's opening act. Modena, Italy. In the 1980s, it was home to some of the world's largest automobile manufacturers. detomaso, Ferrari and, of course, Lamborghini.

The early eighties were Lamborghini's heyday. After the success of the Miura, his next creation would be a notable success, the Countach. Sure, it was uncomfortable, difficult to drive, and impossible to see from the outside. But the Countach was undeniably a moving work of art, and for a brief moment, Lamborghini was on top of the world. But that moment wouldn't last. As the 1980s progressed, no one could afford to buy their fantastic machines, and Lamborghini could hardly afford to build them. Italian passion gave way to American industrialism as Chrysler took over Lamborghini and the sun seemed to set on the renaissance of the Italian automobile.

Modena began to look like a ghost town and posters of Italian supercars were being replaced by the rising stars of Japan and Britain. Lamborghini was on the brink of bankruptcy. DeTomaso quietly faded away and Fiat desperately tried to save Maserati and Ferrari, luckily though during all this turmoil, a young man was sweeping the Lamborghini factory workshops and had something to prove. One of Italy's most notable designer stories begins not in Florence or Rome, but in Argentina, the birthplace of pen cartoons and, of course, chimichurri. I quite enjoy the flavor of chimichurri, it has a delicious brightness and flavor, which brings out the umami flavors of meats like filet mignon, ribs, and even swordfish.

Nice. Perhaps Argentina's most notable creation would come in 1955, when a boy named Horacio Pagani was born in the town of Casilda. His parents raised him on the meager salary of a baker and a music teacher. He was barely enough to keep them afloat, so when Horacio wanted a bicycle, he had to build it from spare parts. He would use that bike to ride around the city and admire the cars. And one of his first fascinations was with one of the greatest sports cars ever made, the Jaguar E-Type. Look, it can't be understated how many designers found their muse in Jaguar's convertible sports car.

It is certainly a topic worth addressing in the future. Horacio found an E-Type in his town and spent hours examining every detail of the well-proportioned machine. There weren't many nice cars in this small South American town, so the opportunity to get up close and personal with such an influential car was life-changing. That E-Type was a revelation for young Horacio, that a car could be so dazzling and so beautiful, with curves like those of a beautiful woman and with the roar of a lion roaring under its skin. From then on, Horatio's attention was focused on his music lessons.

He read racing magazines and carved his favorite cars in wood. And in those magazines he learned about the Italian city of Modena, where the most beautiful sports cars in the world were manufactured in steel and aluminum. The holy Italian temples of Maserati, Lamborghini and Ferrari. Maybe it was the half-Italian blood that ran through his veins, but Horacio knew that one day he would call Italy home and build his own cars there. During his adolescence, Horacio fixed things for the locals in his workshop. Working within those walls would hone his skills and drive him to develop a core philosophy with his hands.

He created art, played the piano, carved wood and bent metal. And with his mind, he would design repair machines, build bicycles and design dream cars like Leonardo da Vinci. Pagani would seek to combine art and science. In 1973, Horacio had started university to study engineering and art. Meanwhile, he runs a successful home business, creating a variety of products such as bar stools and caravans. But in the late 70s, he finally managed to realize his passion: to create a car, the best kind of car, a racing car. Horacio confidently wrote the aerodynamic bodywork for his Formula 2 car, but he lacked the engineering knowledge to build an engine for it.

He then approached Renault, which was one of the few companies with a presence in Argentina at that time. With his designs in hand, he demanded that Renault give him an engine and allow him to be part of the Renault factory team. They accepted their results and Formula 2 wasn't earth-shattering, but it was still an impressive feat for a college student to build a competitive racing car. And this being the late 1970s, everyone was looking for another Gordon Murray to come along. Renault saw that same spark in Horacio and approached Horacio to involve him more. To break the ice they brought with them another Argentine Formula One champion, Juan Manuel Fangio Recio and Fangio became fast friends and Horacio signed for the Renault team as a design consultant to inspire the young Horacio, his new friend, he took him to meet the bosses. of Fiat and Mercedes, for whom he drove in the past.

For Fangio, it was a chance to pass on his decades of racing knowledge and an excuse to have fun with young Horacio. For Horacio it was the first real experience of him rubbing shoulders with the automotive giants. This experience was the straw that broke the camel's back. Horacio knew what he had to do and in 1983 he packed his bags and moved to Modena. He arrived in Italy with no real prospects. Him carrying a tent, a bicycle and, most importantly, five letters of recommendation from Fangio. He would take those letters to all the best sports car companies in Italy asking for work.

But Fiat, DeTommaso, Maserati and Ferrari rejected it. The last one on his list was Lamborghini. The creators of the most beautiful machines in Italy. A perfect home for Horacio and his dreams of sports cars with feminine shapes. But they also said no. With nothing to lose, he showed up at Lamborghini's door anyway and they reluctantly gave a young man his dream job. Young Horacio enters the hallowed halls of Italy's best supercar manufacturer, Automobili Lamborghini. A shining icon of Sant'agata Bolognese As he stands, surrounded by the men who built the 350 GT and the Miura, he looks on with his mouth open, stars in his eyes and a broom in his hand.

Horacio Pagani is now Lamborghini's official concierge. Every morning he would hop on his bicycle, leave his small shack on the outskirts of town, and get to work, cleaning cigarette ashes and oil stains in the shadow of machines he could only dream of designing. Dirty work, shoddy or not, his passion had not diminished with hard work and patience. Horacio soon found himself rising through the ranks thanks to his extensive experience shipping fiberglass to Argentina. He landed a spot on the new composites team. His first project was to create the body of the savage and advanced Italian war machine, the LM002, a huge truck similar to a Humvee.

It was a rather strange move for a sports car brand and the V12-powered off-road beast was a critical failure for Lamborghini. But it was a professional boost for Horacio himself. He had proven himself to the top brass at Lamborghini and even became friends with famous test driver Valentino Balboni. His next test then was to finally work on a real Lamborghini redesign and add tanks to the unloved Jalpa. In 1987, his dreams were about to come true. He was the chief engineer overseeing the composites department and had become obsessed with a new material called carbon fiber. A tough space-age composite material that had proven itself on the track.

Horacio wanted nothing more than to build the new special edition of the Countach from the revolutionary material. All he needed was an Autoclave and his team at Lamborghini could get to work. The bosses at Lamborghini, however, really didn't give a shit about carbon fiber. I mean, after all, Lamborghinis didn't race and Ferrari didn't make carbon fiber at the time. So why should they work for a boss who just doesn't get it? For sure yes. That wasn't ideal... anyway. When you work for a lazy, uninspired out of touch boss, sometimes you have to do it yourself to prove that he was right about Lamborghini.

Horacio went to the bank, took out a gigantic loan and bought his own autoclave. Now, for those who don't know, an autoclave is basically a giant oven and vacuum chamber used to form and strengthen molded carbon fiber. They are huge and expensive machines. And Horacio just showed up one day with one at Lamborghini, working with carbon fiber sheets and developing new techniques from scratch. Horacio and his special tank team would build the world's fastest Lamborghini The Countach Evoluzione and an oddly shaped but impressive technical demonstration made of carbon fiber, Kevlar and aluminum. Using these new materials allowed Horatio's team to reduce the weight of the counter to less than that of a Mazda Miata and it was still powered by that massive Lamborghini V12, meaning this new Countach was capable of reaching 60 miles per hour in almost 4 seconds and rising to more than 200 miles per hour.

It was a concept car that was faster than the fastest car in the world at the time. The Porsche 959. I mean, it wasn't pretty, but it was proof that Pagani knew what he was talking about. He fervently believed that these new materials were the future of sports cars. But Lamborghini continued to ignore it and probably because they were bankrupt, the idea of ​​building cars from more expensive materials using huge autoclaves probably scared Lamborghini bosses off the idea. It was in the late 1980s that supercar sales plummeted, although at the time Lamborghini was a small company, they simply couldn't shift to a new way of making cars.

This, of course, frustrated Pagani. His philosophy was that cars should be beautiful and functional at all costs. They should not be designed with profitability in mind. He didn't care if anyone bought them. He simply saw sports cars as art worthy of existing just to exist. After struggling to try to push the Italian bull in a new direction, he shook his engineer's hand, packed up his autoclave, and left. What was it about carbon fiber that led Pagani to leave his dream job to dedicate himself to using it? His dedication to his material was likely due to his lifelong mentor, Juan Manuel Fangio, who was perhaps the most unlucky driver in history.

Fangio had been a magnet for automotive disasters throughout his entire racing career. He fell off a cliff during a rally in 1948. The accident killed his co-driver. A few years later, he would be thrown from his car at Monza. Then, in 1955, he drove for Mercedes-Benz at Le Mans. And we all know how he fared. He was even kidnapped in Cuba. Fangio had a lot of bad luck. Even when he was not driving in 1981, Fangio was invited to Italy to be the guest of honor at the Monza Grand Prix. There, the newly built McLaren MP4/1, driven by John Watson, went off the track and crashed into a barrier that was Scott Watson, and... a really nasty barrier.

It was the kind of accident that most drivers in the 1980s would not escape. Miraculously, Watson emerged from the remaining half of the car unharmed. The secret of hisSurvival was that the MP4/1 was the first to be built with a carbon fiber monocoque, meaning the driver sat safely enclosed in a nearly indestructible egg. That projectile kept Watson safe from the accident. He also kept the car light and stiff, and started a trend that continues to this day. Fangio and the rest of the racing world learned one immutable fact that day: the future would be made of carbon fiber.

Now, at that time it was not an easy material to work with. McLaren themselves had to send their design to Hercules Aeronautics to build the carbon fiber components. Because no one in racing really knew how to work with that material, translating the technology to a production street car would take a genius. Now, in 1987, Lamborghini had one of those geniuses at its disposal: Horacio Pagani. But sadly it was ignored and Lamborghini would lose the race to build the world's first carbon fiber supercar. That title would go to Jaguar with the XJR-15 (SORRY, I WAS WRONG ABOUT THE CAR) And then of course in 1992, Gordon Murray and the McLaren F1 would shake up the industry forever.

Murray's singular focus on weight savings meant he had to build the F1 with advanced composites such as carbon fibre. The result was a car that had incredible rigidity and of course, unprecedented speed. It won't go over 391. But anyway, 391 is pretty fast, right? And Horatio was proven right all along to the world. When the McLaren F1 began going on sale in 1992, Pagani got to work on his own supercar. Pagani drug autoclave carbon fiber to Modena, Italy, and opened his own store initially known as Modena Design. This new company quickly became one of the world's leaders in carbon fiber design and production.

From the doors of his factory came parts for the Ferrari Formula One team, the Aprilla Moto GP team and touring cars from around the world. Horacio quickly made a name for himself as a guy who could make fast cars faster. If you were a racing team in the early '90s, you wanted what Pagani had to offer. Somewhere between consulting with the company he left about his new Diablo and building top-secret airplane parts. Horacio called his old friend and mentor, Juan Fangio, and told him to come help him. It was time for him to finally move forward with his master plan of being Modena's next big automaker.

He would give it the project codename C8. After Horacio's wife Christina and her love of Mercedes C-Class race cars began, Fangio and Pagani took everything they learned about racing and building race car parts for others and applied those concepts to a radically new car design. Its exterior appearance would come from Group C Racing. During the 1980s, Le Mans cars became aerodynamic and incredibly fast, screaming at over 200 miles per hour at Mulsanne and prompting race officials to add the now-famous chicanes, you know, just to Slow down and keep things safe. Pagani was inspired by the beauty of these low, aerodynamically sculpted racing cars.

He also says that he was inspired by women sunbathing on the beach, which, you know, really embodies the spirit of Italian car design. His fluid sketches, then, would be a combination of his two favorite artistic inspirations: women and racing cars. However, racing inspiration didn't end with Group C. In the early '90s, Nissan took its wedge of speed, the Z32 300ZX, and turned it into a fire-breathing Le Mans champion. The 300ZX IMSA GTS. Horacio took notes. After all, it was a fast car and he was designing a fast car. So he added some of the Nissan's advanced aerodynamic parts to his own drawings.

Then, after consulting with Lamborghini, he added large one-piece body panels and large doors to his designs. Perhaps remembering how difficult it was to get in and out of the Countach. Thanks to a partnership with Renault to build new carbon aerodynamic parts for his racing cars and the wild Espace F1 concept, he had learned important lessons and structural designs. Every day he would tour his workshop, talk to Fangio and Balboni and make improvements to the design based on what he experienced. In the end he managed to work out the basic shape on paper, but before he could start working on the actual plans, the C8 project needed something very important.

With my heart pounding, the choice was obvious. The Group C cars had V12s, so the C8 would need a V12 with the help of Fangio, who remembers that he was a Mercedes Benz racing driver. Horatio went to AMG and asked them for an engine even though he knew they were making a higher performance engine, the ones that would eventually power their flying race car program. He humbly asked for a lower-spec six-litre V12, the same type used in sedans. Mercedes agreed and promised him only five M120 v12s from his warehouse. This is where the differences between Horacio and other car designers are exemplified.

Gordon Murray demanded that his V12 make more than 550 horsepower and was upset when BMW couldn't shave an additional 20 pounds off the block. Horacio only wanted a V12 because all the best racing cars had a V12. And the fact that it was a 400-horsepower sedan engine didn't bother him at all. Pagani was much more concerned with how it sounded. His mother had taught him to play the piano and that love of music never left him. The harmony of 12 cylinders singing in unison is enough to warm any heart much more important than a few extra horses. Finally he just had to put all the pieces together and give it a name.

He would name the car Fangio F1 after the driver who had been at his side from the beginning. Unfortunately, however, in the final stages of construction of this beautiful tribute to his friend Fangio, disaster struck in the early days of May 1995. Juan Manuel Fangio died from health complications. His life, a colorful tapestry of racing history, and his devastating blow to a man named Horacio Pagani. After a period of intense mourning, Horacio returned to his office to continue with the project. They started together, but couldn't in good conscience name the car. After mentoring him so soon after his passing.

The C8 project continued unnamed for years and finally, in 1998, after the car had been six years in development, Pagani took a prototype back to his home country of Argentina. There, in the Andes Mountains, winds could reach speeds of more than 150 miles per hour, making it the perfect place to perfect a car's aerodynamics. The local population has a name for these searing blasts of air. The Zonda winds. Blessed by the spirit of his homeland, the C8 returned to Modena with a new name, The Mystical Wind. His wife Cristina, and the 12-cylinder Zonda C 12. And at the 1999 Geneva Motor Show, he revealed it to the public.

It was a pretty brave decision on Horacio's part to create a completely new supercar. By the late 1990s, McLaren F1 had raised the bar for everyone in the industry. Ferrari and Lamborghini were becoming titans. A new supercar would have to be something truly unique to stand out from the noise. Fortunately, Unique is a Pagani of sorts. In 1999 you could buy Lamborghini's Diablo, a huge, beautiful supercar with a roaring V12. It was ten fucking years old and it had Nissan headlights. The Zonda, on the other hand, was a custom sculpture made from space age materials, and since there were only five of them, it didn't matter what they cost because they were already priceless works of art.

Nothing in the car was normal. The engine cover is secured with a leather strap, complementing the custom luggage bags flanking the beautiful carbon-trimmed Mercedes V12. The Zonda's striking interior makes your Rolex look mundane. Giant toggle switches emerge from an aluminum dash flanked by suede and leather or whatever other material you like, as every C12 was a completely custom, hand-built machine. The pedal assembly is machined aluminum and adapts to your driving position. The seats were designed to fit your body like an Armani suit, except they're made from better materials. The air conditioning vents looked like rocket engines, and unlike most Italian supercars of the time, they actually kept you cool.

And finally, everywhere you look inside you'll find that incredible lightweight material, known as carbon fiber, reminding you that this car is not only a truly beautiful thing to behold, but it's also an engineering marvel. But of course it's a supercar. How did you drive? It only made a meager 400 horsepower compared to that pedestrian Mercedes V12, but it was light and aerodynamic. So the performance was on par with what you would expect from Italy's best. But if you judge a Pagani Zonda based on its speed, you're missing the point entirely. You don't judge the Sistine Chapel by its seating capacity.

The Zonda was much more than just another fast car. The Zonda's contemporaries, such as the CLK GTR and Diablo, were downright difficult to drive. It was difficult to get into the CLK, difficult to change and angry. It was a racing car. It didn't matter how comfortable you were. The Devil was a lead weight posing as a car. It focuses exclusively on aesthetic beauty and pays little attention to user experience. The Zonda. Thanks to its ultra-lightweight construction, opulent interior, and absurd amounts of torque, it was a dream to be in and drive. You could shift from first to fifth and accelerate, a trick Horatio was proud to show people so they could drive.

It wasn't necessary to be a racing driver at all. And like the McLaren F1 because of the carbon fiber bodywork, it didn't need ridiculous brakes or advanced driving aids. Any bumbling idiot could enjoy the ride. Then, at the end of your Sunday drive, it was a car you could park in front of the Louvre and draw more attention than the paintings inside. Despite the staggering price of almost $300,000, which today far exceeds half a million dollars, 57 buyers ordered a Zonda c 12 of their own. Pagani now had a big problem. They only had enough resources to build five in total, and one of them had been used for testing.

So it's our first exhibition in Geneva. We walked into the show and discovered Pagani, and we couldn't believe this car the first time we saw it. And the magical ingredients. We couldn't understand how this car came out of nowhere. And while we've watched the progression of Pagani, we all know we're now with Zonda, R and Cinque. It has been ten or eleven years of incredible progression. And it's really put this company in the spotlight and competing with the really big guys. The consumer response had proven at least one thing. Horacio was right all along. He had proven to his former bosses at Lamborghini that he knew how to build a damn car.

With that new confidence, what followed was pure madness. Some designers would be happy with a one-hit wonder. They had seen his car achieve greatness and do a lot of iterations over ten years and called it good. Instead, Horacio Pagani chose to constantly improve the Zonda. Always looking at defects, listening to feedback and modifying the design. After the launch of the C 12 in 1999, he immediately got to work. A year later, he was back in Geneva. This time Pagani Automobili had a couple more employees and they set out to build a new Zonda. The Zonda s is now powered by a 540-horsepower seven-liter V12 similar to that found in the infamous CLK GTR Strassen version.

It had sports suspension and an extra gear, meaning you can now shift from first to sixth if you wanted, and the larger displacement engine was more than happy to keep you going. The C 12 S transformed the Zonda from a competent supercar to a proper hypercar with a top speed of over 200 miles per hour. A year later the S 7.3 appeared, generating even more torque. It became more modern and behaved thanks to traction control and ABS. This was followed by the Roadster. Usually when a car becomes a convertible, it also becomes an overweight piece of junk. The Zonda is made entirely of carbon fibre, meaning the rigidity of the chassis has not changed.

The base car was stiff enough to not need reinforcement. The brilliant Roadster was followed in 2005 by the Pagani Zonda F. Fangio's name was finally attached to a Pagani creation. The F was extensively redesigned. AMG had managed to squeeze a staggering 600 horsepower out of its V12. It had inconel exhausts like the McLaren F1, Brembo carbon ceramic brakes and since then Pagani was now at the forefront of carbon fiber development. The Zonda F had a new type of carbon fiber called Z-preg that weighed less but was stronger. Aspecial edition of the Pagani Zonda F would become one of the fastest cars on the Nürburgring, surpassing the Ferrari.

Enzo. It even beat the Bugatti Veyron on the Top Gear test track. This performance, of course, wasn't really about the ratios. He once said that speed makes you lose sight of what's important to you, that as you drive faster and faster, your vision through the windshield becomes narrower and narrower until all you can see is the road. . And I wanted you to see his car. Apparently, that didn't stop him from building ever faster cars. For example, the Zonda R, a track special Only Zonda, a completely new car that shared only 10% of its parts with the tram that was rumored to be built as a testbed for the upcoming Huayra.

It was such an amazing car that was born. The Zonda Cinque was the road-legal version of the Zonda R. Both had paddle shifters capable of shifting in less than 100 milliseconds and were made of a new substance. Pagani had to remain one of the leaders in the carbon fiber world. So when it came time to upgrade his beloved Zonda, Horacio chose to pioneer the use of Carbo Tanium, a fusion of carbon fiber and titanium. Only five Cinques were produced. Cinque is the Italian word for five. But that wasn't exclusive enough. Art loses all meaning if, after all, it is repetitive.

So, after Cinque there was the tricolor. These were Zondas that were tributes to the Italian aerobatics team, and only three of them were built. Each sold for just over $1.5 million in 2012 at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Zonda showed the world his fastest creation yet. The Revolution, with the new version of the Mercedes V12, generates almost 800 horsepower, double that of the original C 12. Like the R, it was only intended for the race track and, like the R, it was also followed by a road version. The HP Barchetta, one of the most impressive Italian cars ever built. Like many Pagani, the Barchetta is unpainted.

A blue lacquer is simply added to the carbon-titanium body that is shown to the world. The beauty of the material that Pagani pioneered so many years before. Rumored to be the latest version of the Zonda, it has classic Pagani styling. Only three were built. One crashed and the other is Horacio's personal car, a worthy gift to himself for creating a symphony of incredible machines for over a decade. Each unique and each an improvement over the last. Each one of them is exclusively Pagani. With the trio of Barchettas unleashed on the world, Horacio had finally painted his first masterpiece, a beautiful, colorful painting of what supercars were meant to be pieces of moving art, not just soulless machines with space, ancient technology, and dull designs. life, but elegant.

Fluid, impactful devices that demand attention and speak to the unique visions of their creators. Today we are entering a new era of fast cars in which engineers, not artists, have the controls. Engines are getting smaller, transmissions are getting more complex, and electricity is ending the era of roaring engines at a dizzying pace. In Horacio's heart, however, the wind has not stopped blowing. With his brush, he has painted grander designs on the mirror. The Huayra And now the utopia, still backed by a 12-cylinder orchestra designed with poetic lines and with details that could only come from Horacio himself.

New creations that sing in the same tone as the original Zonda throughout its more than 20 years of constant improvements. The Zonda never lost its pure emotion soul painted on a carbon fiber canvas. Raw power without turbos or electric motors. A perfect mix of science and art. What he gave the world was the fully realized vision of a young Argentinian who dreamed of one day returning to Italy to create something special. Inspired by Leonardo DaVinci despised by Lamborghini and driven by Juan Manuel Fangio, Pagani Zonda would be in Italy the wind of change that would blow throughout the automotive world.