VELVETISSUE • n°35 • 2023
UTOPIAN REALITY
A project born of a vision – to give life to a timeless yet cutting edge hypercar. An oxymoron on four wheels created by Pagani, an artisanal manufacturer that transforms dreams into reality
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Diego Tamone - ph. courtesy by Pagani
The Pagani Utopia is a hypercar that is rich in details like the butterfly doors and forged monoblock wheels with carbon fibre extractors
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The mood board inspiring this creative idea featured a selection of images and colours strongly influenced by the 1950s and 60s. Brushstrokes of turquoise, burgundy, coral and ivory skilfully interspersed with design elements applied to vehicles dating from Dolce Vita era like the Vespa or the first Cinquecento. This exciting collage is completed, of course, by postcards of Italy, the Bel Paese, depicting for example, the beauty of the Tuscan landscape, the Cinque Terre and Venice. A distillation of essentiality and emotion, in fact. The new Utopia came into being like this, at Pagani Automobili, a small artisanal workshop based in the outskirts of Modena, producing no more than fifty cars a year. The brand has Italian creativity and flair in its DNA, complementing the stylistic influence its founder and current owner Horacio Pagani has on its four-wheeled creations. In 1983 Pagani decided to fulfil his desire to make his mark in Italy, leaving his native Argentina to make the opposite journey to that undertaken by thousands of Italian immigrants in the early 20th century. He set up his own sartorial factory in the region that in the 1960s
saw the beginning of the epic story involving the most famous international high performance supercar manufacturers, companies like Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati. It was a dream come true, and in the space of only twenty-five years, the appearance of models like the Zonda and Huayra has now been followed by the arrival of the Utopia. The name is the reflection of a project that from the very start seemed to many – but not Don Horatio – to be an unattainable dream. A light, simple hypercar that can provide sheer driving pleasure while remaining unconstrained by the requirements imposed on so many contemporary sports cars, vehicles bristling with over-the-top technology designed to cope with hybrid propulsion and a digital interface.
It took more than four thousand stylistic drawings to develop this dream, followed by two full-scale reproductions and eight prototypes – it eventually took six years to create timeless lines that dialogue with advanced aerodynamics where sleek, flowing shapes are interrupted by vital appendages designed to generate the required downforce and reduce drag. No touchscreens in
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Below, harmony and emotion generate the sensory appeal at the basis of Horacio Pagani’s third vehicle.
Clockwise,
the interior, but an analogue gauge cluster and manual controls in a homage to automobile tradition, rich in detail and eager to reveal the smooth running of the car’s mechanical systems. In the back, visible from outside through a transparent shell that resembles a glass casket created to contain an object of inestimable value, sits a 6-litre, 864 hp 60° V12 engine developing 1,100 Nm of torque, developed specially for Pagani by Mercedes-AMG, linked to a seven-gear transmission. Also available in a manual version for the purists among us.
www.pagani.com
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from top. The rear with the four central titanium exhaust outlets. The dash, dominated by analogue instruments in traditional style. The chunky leather seats wrap occupants firmly
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The Utopia’s complex yet sleek silhouette shown in an aerial view that reveals the elegant glazed sections
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