Cartorque vol 9 - ‘a love letter to pagani’

There are fast cars. There are expensive cars. There are fast, expensive cars with seats made of leather grown by monks on a diet of Wagyu beef and Mozart. And then… there’s Pagani.

Pagani doesn’t care about lap times. It doesn’t care about Nürburgring records or emissions regulations or what you think is tasteful. Pagani is not here to play nice. It’s here to punch your senses into next week while serenading your eardrums with the sound of a naturally aspirated V12 at full throttle.

Because this — this is art that happens to do 0-60 in less than three seconds.

Let’s go back to the beginning, though. A young Argentine named Horacio Pagani, who grew up idolising Leonardo da Vinci and building race cars out of balsa wood, decided one day that Lamborghini just wasn’t quite mad enough. So he packed up, moved to Italy, worked under the legendary Juan Manuel Fangio’s recommendation, and eventually decided that if no one else would build the ultimate hypercar… he would.

From that slightly mad dream came the Zonda. A name that would go on to be whispered in hushed tones by car spotters, billionaires, and people who think petrol is a personality trait. The Zonda looked like a spaceship that had crash-landed into a wind tunnel and then mated with a Formula 1 car. And the sound? The sound was biblical. AMG’s naturally aspirated V12 behind your head, howling like a wounded opera singer falling off a cliff. It didn’t rev. It screamed.

But where most hypercars stopped at speed, the Zonda went one step further. It was a car sculpted with obsessive detail. Carbon fibre everywhere — not the fake sticker kind you see on hot hatches, but real, woven aerospace-grade stuff, laid by hand. The interior was a feast of billet aluminium, leather, and gleaming analog dials that looked like they belonged on a vintage aircraft or an expensive Swiss diving watch.

Other carmakers build cars. Pagani crafts them. You don’t see bolts in a Pagani — you see jewellery. You don’t sit in it — you enter it, like you’re stepping into a cathedral made of speed.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more absurd, out came the Huayra. Named after an ancient South American wind god — because of course it is — the Huayra wasn’t just fast. It was intelligent. It had flaps that moved independently at each corner to help it corner like a gecko on a mirror. It had an interior that looked like the lovechild of a submarine and a luxury wristwatch factory. And it still had that AMG V12, now twin-turbocharged, delivering a tidal wave of torque big enough to bend physics.

But here’s the thing: Pagani doesn’t chase numbers. It doesn’t care if it’s quicker around the track than a McLaren or lighter than a Ferrari. It isn’t obsessed with shaving milliseconds off lap times. Pagani exists to make you feel something. When you drive it — assuming you’re one of the anointed few with the bank account, connections, and emotional stability to handle it — you don’t just move quickly. You are part of a rolling piece of art that talks to you. Every gearshift is mechanical poetry. Every throttle stab is an aria. Every moment inside the cockpit is an occasion, even if you're just going to get milk.

There’s also a certain madness to the brand that you can’t help but love. Pagani’s carbon-titanium weave wasn’t good enough for them… so they invented carbotitanium. That’s right — they made their own material. Just because they could. Because compromise is for people who build beige crossovers.

Then there’s the customer experience. You don’t just buy a Pagani. You’re involved. Horacio will personally sit with you, go over sketches, help you pick materials for your bespoke interior, and probably ask what music you want your exhaust to sound like. The man is insane. But it’s the kind of madness we desperately need in an age where cars are becoming soulless electric toasters with Spotify and cupholders.

In an industry obsessed with autonomy, electrification, and mass production, Pagani stands defiantly alone. It is small. It is stubborn. And it is brilliant. A company that builds less than 50 cars a year — each one different, each one perfect, each one a middle finger to the idea that passion can be replaced by algorithms.

So yes, Pagani is rare. Yes, it’s ludicrously expensive. And yes, most of us will never even touch one, let alone own one.

But that doesn’t matter.

Because Pagani isn’t just cool. It isn’t just fast, or beautiful, or loud. Pagani is the dream you had as a kid, when you first fell in love with cars. It’s the sketch you drew in school instead of paying attention in maths. It’s the fire in your belly that says, “I know this is stupid. I know this is impractical. But my God, look at it.”

Pagani is what happens when you stop asking “Why?” and start saying, “Why not?”

It’s not just cool.

It’s what cool wants to be when it grows up.

Adam Woodruff

Writer