Horacio Pagani: Always Good For A Quote
Horacio Pagani arrived in Italy from Argentina in 1983, aged 27. He started at Lamborghini and worked on the Countach Evoluzione project, an entirely carbon-fibre supercar concept. From there he set up Modena Design – the clients included Renault, Nissan and Peugeot – before starting work on the Zonda, his first car, in 1993. It appeared at the Geneva Motor Show in 1999.
Driven and opinionated, here’s what he had to say when we sat down ahead of our Huayra test-drive…
• “Pagani is 93 per cent owned by my family and seven per cent owned by another family. That’s very good for decisions, because we make them all by ourselves.”
• “Right now, all the other supercar makers are owned by big car companies. In my opinion, they lost their soul.”
• “Ferrari, Aston, Maserati, Lamborghini… We are a fan of all these cars, as a child we loved them.”
• “Our philosophy takes inspiration from the Renaissance concept: art and science can work together hand-in-hand.”
• “We often see design and engineering centres separated. When I was at Lamborghini it was all separated and there was always fighting between the two; it costs a lot to re-design concepts. Working together, we reduce cost and the creative process is better.”
• “The people at Mercedes AMG were humble and followed our principles and it’s an honour for us because they have 125 years of history.”
• “At first we had the meetings at AMG, but now we have meetings here.”
• “I think car makers have fallen asleep with electronics; you have to build a car that is safe without electronics, a car that is safe in principle.”
• “Like the Zonda, we wanted two personalities for the Huayra: it has to be the gentle lady and the bad one.”
• “The purpose was to make the Huayra as sensual as possible. If you have a woman in the passenger seat, it’s like sex.”
