If there’s one thing Horacio Pagani wants people to know, it’s that his Pagani Zonda “didn’t just fall from the sky. No, it was a deep-rooted dream.”
By the time he was 10-years-old, Pagani was building model cars in his native village in Argentina using scrap pieces of Balsa wood, a Gillette razor, some glue and sandpaper.
When he was 12, he very casually stated at a turkey-and-ricotta ravioli family dinner, “When I grow up, I’m going to build the most beautiful sports cars in Modena.”
That’s right, in Modena, Italy – the land of his ancestors and of his all-time idol, Leonardo da Vinci, for whom his admiration knows no bounds. Yes, Modena—the birthplace of the Ferraris that would grace the pages of AutoMundo and Mecánica Popular and fire the young Pagani’s imagination.
It was in flipping through piles and piles of these magazines that the Argentine teenager came across photographs of young designers, destined to become famous, toiling away in their shops: Pininfarina, Bertone…
Inspired by those that came before him, in July 1983, a 27-year-old Pagani left his home in Argentina, with only a couple hundred dollars in his pocket, for Italy to take a job as a technician with Lamborghini.
He got the job on the recommendation of one Juan Manuel Fangio, who had just retired from Formula 1 with five world titles to his name.
Owing to 80s’ recession, his job with the Italian carmaker was temporarily put on hold. This forced the newly arrived immigrant and his young wife, Cristina, to live meagrely on their savings: they would spend their first Italian summer camping in a tent and getting around on bicycles. Those bicycles still hang in Pagani’s office today.
30 years and 200 supercars later
Thirty years later the 58-year-old heads one of the world’s most exclusive automakers. Only 20 or so units, assembled entirely by hand, are produced every year.
Exclusive? Just ask F1 driver Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes), who arrived at the most recent Monaco Grand Prix behind the wheel of his exclusive purple Pagani Zonda LH (Hamilton’s initials, obviously), which, like all the other Paganis, is powered by a Mercedes AMG engine.
The first Pagani Zonda, named after a warm wind that occurs in the Andes, stole the show when it was unveiled to the world at the Geneva Auto Show in 1999. The story could have ended there, as is the case with most supercars.
It did not end there. New versions were launched over the course of the decade that followed, notably the Pagani Zonda R, which in 2010, set a lap record of 6 minutes 47 seconds at the legendary Nürburgring.
Better yet, a second generation, launched in 2011, would not only carry the torch, but would (finally) be available in North America:
The Pagani Huayra (pronounced WHY-ra), named after the Inca god of wind, can be ordered through dealers in Toronto (Pfaff Automotive Partners), San Francisco, Beverly Hills, Miami, Dallas and… Greenwich, Connecticut, for the modest sum of 849,000 Euros (CA$1.24 million).
And how long will you have to wait to get your hands on this hand-assembled car? Around two years.
“I can’t even remember anymore how it all started”
- Horacio Pagani
No one in the Pagani family, which immigrated from Italy to Argentina three generations prior to Horacio’s birth, had ever shown any passion for cars whatsoever up until then.
In fact, in the industrial town of Casilda, the Paganis were bread bakers of all things.
Pagani will tell you that he doesn’t remember exactly when he fell in love with cars. “It was such a long time ago, I can’t even remember anymore how it all started,” he says.
While other kids his age were into sports, recreational activities and cruising down Main Street, Pagani was busy visiting the metallurgical companies in his industrial town.
He not only collected parts from which he would build his first creations, he also forged friendships rooted in fun and respect with the workers there. Pagani would bring the grateful workers tasty treats from his family’s bakery and, in exchange, some would lend the young boy a hand, while others would give him an inoperable machine.
Pagani thus discovered the pleasures of disassembling mini-bikes, then reassembling them by hand, or putting together a kit car using old Renault Dauphine parts.
Making Bar stools
By the time he was 17, Pagani was already as interested in manufacturing as he was in design and the art of unique esthetics.
He would often bring a part that piqued his curiosity—or that was giving him trouble—to bed, where he would buff it, polish it, paint it and study it from every angle.
It was at that time that he discovered carbon fibre, a new technical process he found promising, no doubt because it reminded him of the potential of Balsa wood.
While not necessarily against the idea of pursuing technical and university training life—a teacher who ran off with his students’ money, the political chaos of the Perón years—made it clear to Pagani that school wasn’t meant for a self-learner like him.
In September 1976, two months before his 21st birthday, he caused an uproar in his family by announcing that he was dropping out of university to start his own factory.
The very basic 80 square meter building (80 sq ft), made of recycled materials, was the first headquarters of Horacio Pagani Design, a company with a single employee: himself.
His first contract? Building bar stools…
Candles, a hint of Jasmine and the Canadian flag
Despite his incredible achievements Pagani is a reserved man, modest even, a trait reinforced by his short, thin frame. Behind his round Professor Calculus glasses, his gaze is philosophical and penetrating.
Polite, discreet and elegant even in casual clothes, with finesse untypical of a man, Pagani’s attention to detail is meticulous. On the day of our visit, he had the Canadian flag raised on the roof of his headquarters.
In his office, now a makeshift conference room, huge windows let in plenty of light as he takes the time to light a few jasmine-scented candles to perfume the room. Everything must be perfect—just like his cars.
When perfection is an obsession
It was in a smart little industrial corner of San Cesario sul Panaro, in the Italian province of Modena, that Pagani, then head of Lamborghini’s carbon fibre department, chose to set up shop in the 1990s.
Inside the building, designed by Pagani himself, you can feel Pagani’s furious quest for perfection. You feel it as well as in the new plant a few blocks away that was a logical and inevitable expansion of his operations.
“I don’t believe in making compromises,” Pagani says. “Why settle for less?”
Every detail is thought out, then thought out again, and again, just like when he was a kid and would take parts to bed with him to study them, over and over, trying to find a simple solution to the numerous, complex problems that plague designers.
When perfection becomes such an obsession, well, you end up marketing cars entirely assembled by hand, without any kind of automation.
Even the vacuums for the carbotanium are manually operated. Carbotanium is an exclusive material developed and patented by Pagani that combines the strength of carbon fibre and the elasticity of titanium. It also costs about six times more to produce than any other material.
And there is no getting away with a part, no matter how small, that is anything less than perfect. Because at night, Pagani (still) kicks around his workshops, leaving notes with some well-placed comments here and there that his employees will find in the early morning.
The highest level of Elegance
You know what is most impressive about these facilities, where everything is handcrafted, even the assembly trolleys, and where even the screws and taps are stamped “Pagani”?
It is the fact that, not only has the company managed to survive, despite a manufacturing process that verges on that of a cottage industry (since 2000, fewer than 200 cars have been delivered by a small team of 60 or so employees), it has managed to achieve such extraordinary levels of refinement and sophistication, without the “big machine” support offered by the automotive giants of the world.
Pagani truly means the ultimate in sophistication, something reflected in the exacting interiors inspired by the first Bugattis. The only other time I have seen such a magnificent interior was in a Bugatti Veyron, and that car carried a price tag of $2.5 million.
Even Rolls Royces aren’t this refined.
