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PAGANI Ignite passion

L’INTERVISTA/Horacio Pagani by Luca Violo

The car is the essence of modernity, the very icon of speed. At the beginning of the 20th century, the futurist movement identified it as the tangible projection of the future. For Horacio Pagani, what does it mean to create designer cars?
Designing dream cars is both emotional and a great responsibility for us. We have to make sure that our creations ignite passion. We put love and dedication into our work, we use our skills that come from years of study and application. The lesson of Leonardo Da Vinci is in our DNA. It encourages us to combine art, beauty, research and science. Technology and design go hand in hand. Attention to detail is as much about aesthetics as it is about functionality: these are cars that can reach speeds of up to 350 km/h, so attention to safety is a priority.
How is it possible to combine beauty of form and excellence of performance?
At Pagani there is only one philosophy, that of absolute dedication to our work as creatives. It takes knowledge, good taste, the desire to improve, that is, always questioning the work done to see if it can be perfected. What strikes at first glance is aesthetics: research is therefore also oriented towards beauty because when the car is in front of the customer it must speak, it must tell a story, it must communicate love. This is our mission.
Pagani as a tailor-made passion. In a present where iconic recognition is always a winning combination, how is it possible to be big while remaining small?
We live in a place known all over the world as the “Land of Motors”, the place where some of the greatest brands in the sports car sector were born. Maserati was born here in 1914, then Ferrari in 1947, Lamborghini in 1963. Only in more recent times was Pagani Automobili born, as a continuation of Modena Design created thirty years ago. Today, these companies produce thousands of cars a year. In our Atelier, however, we build one car a week and each one is different from the next because, like a haute couture dress, it is tailor-made for the customer.
A Pagani is a very dressy finish from the collectible market. The initial investment over time is revalued exponentially. What are the reasons for this success?
Along with the McLaren F1, the Zonda has been one of the most sought-after sports cars on the market for the past twenty two years. Despite being ten years younger than the F1, Pagani is the car that has been appreciated the most over time. Today it is worth more than ten times its list price. Recently, an F Roadster (made in only 25 examples) was sold for 8 million Euros: for a car that cost 700 thousand Euros in 2010, it is truly a great result that rewards the customer who believed in us. Those who have bought one of our cars – and I’m not just talking about the cars of the last decade but also the Huayra models currently in production – can see their investment greatly revalued.
What does the Rinascimento Programme mean to you?
Pagani Rinascimento is a restoration programme that aims to restore cars to their original state. Every car that comes out of the workshop has its own “Librone” (Big Book) with pictures, data sheets, drawings, where every single piece of information about the car is meticulously reported, including the phases and methods of construction, the materials used: from mechanical parts to systems, interiors, components – at the moment we have a 20 million euro warehouse in the workshop, which for a small company like ours means that we already have everything we need to restore a car, including the original moulds and carbon parts, handmade by our specialised craftsmen. In addition to the book dedicated to the entire history of the car from its birth, there is also one dedicated to restoration. We have digitised our drawings from my arrival in Italy to my time at Lamborghini and up to the present day. We have a highly specialised team of technicians and craftsmen who work as a team, who love and take care of their work in a meticulous way. As a matter of fact, Pagani Rinascimento is not only doing a meticulous restoration work on the car, but also preserving our history. We think it is a duty to the customer and a demonstration of affection towards our cars.
Pagani Arte is a branch dedicated to Pagani’s industrial design projects. What will tomorrow’s car look like?
Pagani Arte is the high style branch dedicated to interior design, luxury objects, and technologies mainly applied to the field of aeronautics and construction, with important commissions all over the world. Our objective is great artistic research, but also great scientific research. To give an example, we recently worked with Airbus ACJ to provide both interior design expertise for private jets on large aircraft and cutting-edge technological solutions: we lightened the weight of the A319 by one tonne, using our special materials. We are currently working with Gulfstream and Agusta Helicopters. Our aim is to bring these technologies to the world of racing and sports cars.
The Museum and the Atelier represent the past and the future of your extraordinary automotive research. What do they represent in the present?
This gallery and the production Atelier want to be both a tribute to automotive art and a more personal account of the fundamental moments of our history, which starts in Argentina and ends in Modena, where the most beautiful cars in the world were designed in my opinion. The museum has an exclusive collection of cars – from the first Zonda, to the Zonda Cinque, Zonda R, Huayra, up to today. We wanted the museum to tell our vision, our Leonardo-inspired philosophy of art and science walking together, in an effort to help underline how important research is, both stylistically, mechanically and technologically. We are currently completing the design of the C10,which started four years ago. We are a year away from its official presentation and we have sold all the cars we had planned, and we already have 76 new requests. We love the romantic cars of the Sixties and, while designing absolutely modern cars, we like the idea of taking that quid that made them beautiful, the originality and spirit of futurism. Every car is the result of a long history, which cannot be current without having a past.

Horacio Pagani Founder & Chief Designer Pagani Automobili, Pagani Archive