Horacio Pagani, one of the leading founders of hypercars: ‘Perfection is a word that we don’t use’

“In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves,” said 19th century English poet and politician Edward G Bulwer-Lytton. It is for this reason perhaps, that Pagani hypercars, renowned for their beautiful forms, are revered as the pinnacle of automotive art.

It’s a love story that began, rather modestly, more than a half-century ago when a young Horacio Pagani became infatuated with the sculptural silhouettes of the automobile.

Growing up in Argentina the son of an artist and a baker, the lad would spend his childhood days indulging in fantasy as he dreamt up cars that at the time existed only in his mind. He would sketch them on a drawing pad and whittle his ideas from balsa wood, with the hopes of one day designing the most beautiful car in the world.

With Leonardo da Vinci as his patron saint, so to speak, Horacio had become enamoured with the Italian polymath of the High Renaissance whose works as an artist, scientist, engineer and architect demonstrated equal reverence for the fields of both art and science – a philosophy that to this day informs all Pagani creations.

He enrolled in industrial design at university and later switched to mechanical engineering but eventually dropped out, dissatisfied with the curriculum he found uninspiring, and frustrated that he could not find a course of study that married both fields to sufficient degree. Add to that the fact that tertiary education would “steal” five of the most creative years of his life.

Instead, Horacio promptly established his own design studio and found early success working on industrial design projects for commercial clients.

By the age of 20, he had designed and built his first Formula Three racing car and a subsequent stint with Renault was all he needed to showcase his talent. His work offered staggering improvements to the body of Renault’s racing car, and this set the wheels in motion for Horacio’s big move to Italy to pursue his boyhood dream.

FROM SWEEPING FLOORS TO CREATING THE WORLD’S FIRST HYPERCAR

The year was 1982 and desperate to get his foot in the door of a car factory floor, a then-27-year-old Horacio Pagani accepted a job at Lamborghini sweeping floors.

Remarkably, he rose through the ranks to eventually become chief engineer, most notably responsible for the Countach Evolution concept car of 1987, a groundbreaking, one-off prototype made from composite materials including Kevlar and carbon fibre-reinforced plastics. The concept never made it to production, but proved an important testbed for new materials and technologies in Lamborghini’s research and development.

During his time with the Raging Bull, it was again frustration that spurred Horacio’s next move. As the story goes, he wanted to buy an autoclave – an industrial machine for the fabrication of carbon parts – to augment Lamborghini’s production capabilities but his employer refused, deeming it unnecessary as Ferrari apparently didn’t use one at the time.

Prodigiously headstrong by nature, Horacio borrowed the capital to buy his own autoclave, leading to his departure from Lamborghini in 1991.

As top business minds will tell you, it is often in times of crisis that opportunity presents itself, and so Horacio went on to establish his consultancy, Modena Design, which continues to make carbon fibre composites for Formula One cars as well as clients in the automotive, aerospace and biomedical fields today.

Call it visionary or stubbornness, Horacio’s tenacity went on to forever change the automotive landscape when the Pagani Zonda debuted at the 1999 Geneva Motor Show.

Designed as a tribute to Horacio’s hero, 1950s Formula One champion Juan Manuel Fangio, it was unlike anything the world had ever seen. With its revolutionary design, use of advanced materials and unfathomable horsepower (at the time), the Zonda was more than your average supercar. And thus, the first car commercially produced and inscribed with the Pagani name prompted British journalists in attendance to coin a new breed of automobile: The hypercar. And the rest, as they say, is history.

A HEALTHY OBSESSION WITH BEAUTY

“A shape cannot be elegant if it is technically incorrect,” Horacio declared, speaking exclusively in Italian from his office in Modena, Italy, as his son Christoper plays the role of interpreter.

Early in the interview, the latter dutifully swivels their iPad around the room to give us a virtual tour of the low-key facility, which once upon a time housed the manufacturing grounds of the legendary Zonda. 

The construction and assembly of Pagani cars have since moved to an expanded location in nearby Modena that’s certainly less gigafactory and more “sartorial atelier”, as Pagani Automobili produces only about 50 hypercars a year.

Officially renamed the Art & Science Research Center, this is Pagani’s research and development nerve centre, where about 50 of the company’s 180-strong workforce channel their collective minds towards the relentless pursuit of “aesthetics, engineering and innovation”.

“This is a place where imagination flows very fast and a lot of ideas come together as a final car,” offered Horacio. 

Ask any athlete and they will tell you there is unspoken magic in the obsessed; it’s the proviso to achieving greatness, they’ll say. Ask any entrepreneur who’s achieved stratospheric success and they are likely to quote the same.

“The research of beauty is like an obsession; the more you work on it, the more you want to research it,” Horacio affirmed.

For Horacio, who lives in the Italian countryside, beauty and inspiration are to be found outside during walks in nature, as well as indoors, lost in a book. His latest read? A book about Italian fashion designer Emilio Pucci, who gained fame in the mid to late 20th century for his creative use of colour and geometric prints.

On occasion, he would head to Milan – about a two-hour train journey from his home – when in greater need of a muse. While there, his excursion would entail visits to museums, churches and other spaces to soak in all the art and architecture that the fashion and design capital has to offer. 

But beauty, as we know, is often said to be in the eye of the beholder, and it is emotion that Horacio hopes to evoke.

“Our intention is to create a car that you can say is beautiful or ugly, as this is very subjective,” he said.

Which brings us to the latest product of Horacio’s obsession: the Utopia. 

A NEVERENDING QUEST FOR PERFECTION

Unveiled in 2022, the Utopia represents the company’s third act – its third production model after the Zonda and the Huayra, as it enters its third decade in business.

As with all cars-cum-works-of-art bearing the Pagani signature, all 99 units of the limited-edition coupe were, unsurprisingly, already spoken for before the first car was delivered in 2023. Ditto the roadster version, limited to 130 units, which followed a year later.

“Utopia is a car that’s a little bit out of the ordinary,” Horacio acknowledged. “It brings back the manual transmission, and it is a car that doesn’t offer hybrid solutions.”

Indeed, the Pagani Utopia – the product of over eight years of development involving more than 4,000 sketches and renderings – is a gloriously analogue masterpiece powered by a 6-litre bi-turbo V12 engine specially built by Mercedes-AMG for Pagani.

Taking its rightful place as the haute couture of automotive art, the Utopia stands as a unique rendition of the retromod aesthetic; one that’s decidedly anti-trend. 

Much like the mathematical proportion embodied in the golden ratio, the Utopia represents an equation of beauty unparalleled; one that weaves a beautiful thread between past and present, marrying timelessness and cutting-edge technology to stunning degree. The alchemy of pleasure (for car enthusiasts), if you will.

“It’s a car that tries to steer away from the digital, and so it is a car for the drivers who like pure, fun, simple cars that allow them to enjoy a more analogue feeling,” Horacio described. 

“Simple”, in the fact that its cockpit all but eschews the digital with a delightfully analogue instrument panel, yet it’s a vehicle so aerodynamically fashioned for extraordinary performance.

Now the Utopia’s manual-only transmission requires a level of mastery far beyond the grasp of the novice, as does the dexterity needed to proficiently dispense such a staggering amount of power to the tune of 864hp and 1100Nm torque.

Does it live up to its name, which suggests a state of perfection, albeit imaginary, though?

“In Pagani, perfection is a word that we don't use,” the 70-year-old founder and CEO stated. “We cannot say that we make a perfect car, because a perfect car doesn't exist. We strive for perfection, but we never say we have arrived.”

“What we say in Pagani is that we try and express beauty through the little details. Perfection is impossible to achieve and there are always things that you can improve on to create something with cooler technology and materials,” he added.  

His story may be the stuff of legend, but it is the humility of a conscientious engineer and self-styled “stubborn dreamer” that has left an indelible mark on automotive history. And we can’t wait to see what’s in-store for Chapter 4.