When you go for your Huayra test drive, be sure to leave the windows open the first time you accelerate. The air inlets for the Mercedes AMG twin-turbo V12 are just behind your ear and the noise that emanates from them is startling, a tightly wound hurricane of distortion that swirls into your lugs and threatens to suck you clean out of your underpants, straight into the induction plenums. It’s a scary sound, one that quite rightly makes you apprehensive of the Armageddon that’s about to unfurl when the twin turbos properly get out of bed and pummel 730 PS and 1000 Nm through those rear 335/30 ZR20 steamroller Pirellis. Back off or change gear and there’s a vicious barrage of dump-valve whoosh and tish, as if you’re being repeatedly slapped about the chops by a feisty wet haddock. This is not the organic sound we know from the Zonda’s naturally aspirated V12, it’s industrial techno dominated, albeit very colourfully, by forced induction and you’ll have to wait until quite late in the powerband’s 6,000-RPM span to get a more traditional sense of pistons hammering up and down. Then you brake hard to avoid death and there’s a deep droning that sounds, I can only imagine, like someone trying to wind down a nuclear reactor in a bit of a hurry. The V8 turbo Noble M600 is my closest reference point.
At the Huayra’s core lies a lightweight carbon-fibre tub, made on-site in one of Pagani’s three autoclaves, the top half being simple old carbon-fibre, the bottom half woven with titanium. The titanium carbon doesn’t increase rigidity or stiffness, but it does make the bottom half of the tub bulletproof – can anyone think of any other applications for lightweight, bulletproof material in the automotive sector? – ensuring excellent protection from the fuel tank and whopping great V12 bi-turbo powerplant, both of which nestle behind the driver.
The lightweight tub is mated to subframes front and rear and clothed in carbon-fibre bodywork. The result is a dry weight of 1,350 kg, which translates into about 1,500 kg full of fluids and ready to go. That’s a 487 PS power-to-weight ratio, similar to a Veyron’s and comfortably clear of the Lamborghini Aventador’s 444 PS-per-tonne. And you know that the Huayra is rear-wheel drive, not four-wheel drive like those big VWs, right?
The sheer ferocity of the Huayra’s performance is part of the point here, but it does tip it into something of a downward spiral, simply because its performance is so all-consuming. A dual-clutch gearbox capable of disciplining 1000Nm, for instance, would weigh 200 kg and Pagani didn’t want all that weight dangling out beyond the rear axle, correctly recognising that many of its customers wouldn’t be expert drivers and probably wouldn’t appreciate a hefty gearbox giving them a helping hand into the scenery when the turbos spat them sideways and they backed off in a shrieky panic.
Instead we get an Xtrac automated manual. It weighs 96 kg and is cleverly packaged transversely off the back of the engine, meaning a huge weight saving in a package that puts less metal aft of the rear axle in the first place. But it also requires a monster AP Racing clutch, so the shifts can be pretty brutal, and moving the Huayra about at low speeds can be a very deliberate, almost race-car-like experience. Pagani claim 60 ms for the gearshifts, coincidentally the exact same time as the automated-manual Ferrari 430 Scuderia, but it feels slower and less refined than that – far less torquey – car’s whip-crack shifts.
