{"id":2162450,"date":"2026-09-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2162450"},"modified":"2026-09-25T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T21:00:00","slug":"it-depends-on-the-mood-i-wake-up-horacio-pagani-on-his-favourite-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2162450","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIt depends on the mood I wake up\u201d: Horacio Pagani on his favourite car"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Amid the \u2018Atelier\u2019 factory floor surrounded by Utopias in various stages of build, we asked founder Horacio about his three-car legacy…<\/em><\/p>\n

On driving a Zonda for the first time<\/h3>\n

\u201cIt was certainly an incredible moment because I had dreamed about it my whole life. But the car immediately felt like a friend. There wasn\u2019t anything particularly dramatic about it; everything worked quite well \u2013 surprisingly so!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On Pagani\u2019s core principles<\/h3>\n

\u201cThe inspiration is drawn from Leonardo Da Vinci\u2019s world, from the world of 1980s and 1990s racing cars, and an obsessive attention to detail, this craftsmanship that is very much like a Renaissance workshop.\u201d<\/p>\n

On paving the way for other hypercar startups\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cI believe in the possibility of extreme personalisation, trying to satisfy the customer in all of their desires. It later became something very attractive for other brands, and I must say a good business too, for all the other brands that followed this path.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On the Zonda Roadster, Pagani\u2019s first cabriolet\u00a0<\/h3>\n

\u201cOne characteristic of the Roadster is that many things turned out well without us having specifically studied them \u2013 from the way the windshield wiper clears the glass to the fact that you don\u2019t get air hitting your head. It wasn\u2019t necessary to do what we later had to do on Utopia, adding deflectors here and there. The car was also very rigid, extremely rigid, just like the coupe. So it behaved in the same way, but open-top, allowing you to hear the engine sound even better.\u201d<\/p>\n

On why the Huayra had to go turbo<\/h3>\n

\u201cUndoubtedly, a naturally aspirated engine has its own charm, and a turbocharged engine has another. We couldn\u2019t continue with the Zonda\u2019s engine because it no longer complied with the new regulations. Also, to reach the power levels required over time: our cars must live for at least 10 to 12 years. Therefore, when we start a project, we must be certain that halfway through we won\u2019t have to change the engine. So the Huayra\u2019s V12 started, if I remember correctly, with a little over 700 horsepower and eventually reached 860\u2013870 horsepower as well as the opportunity to homologate the cars worldwide.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On the return of the manual gearbox<\/h3>\n

\u201cPagani doesn\u2019t build cars to satisfy the ego of the people who work here. We build cars to satisfy the ego of the person who pays for them. So if customers ask me for something, we try to build what they want. And the customer asked for a manual gearbox, a real manual connected mechanically to the engine, not a manual-style electronic stick shift, which would have been much simpler. So we worked hard to build exactly what the customer asked for.\u201d<\/p>\n

On which is his favourite Pagani model<\/h3>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important none of [the cars] invades the space of the other. They are three completely different personalities, but they all share the same logo and belong to the same brand \u2013 that was our intention. Which one would I take for a drive? It depends on the mood I wake up in that day, or where I need to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photography: Mark Fagelson<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amid the \u2018Atelier\u2019 factory floor surrounded by Utopias in various stages of build, we asked founder Horacio about his three-car legacy… On driving a Zonda for the first time \u201cIt was certainly an incredible moment because I had dreamed about it my whole life. But the car immediately felt like a friend. There wasn\u2019t anything […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-2162450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2162450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2162450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2162450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2162450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}