The cars to leave the factory of Pagani hold status as some of the world's most exclusive hypercars. Straight from the mind of former Lamborghini engineer Horacio Pagani, these cars embrace the most outlandish design motifs to leave Italy. The Zonda holds a place in the heart of many as this crazy, quad-exhausted car. Pagani succeded this car with the Huayra, a more curvaceous model that pushed the technology further than before. Featuring both a flappy paddle gearbox and a sequential gear stick. Each of these cars had multiple versions spun off, some harder and more track focuses, whereas others baited Bugatti customers.
Pagani now ushers in the next generation of their performance machines, with their third generation the Utopia. A less Italian-sounding name than before, but incredibly symbolic. Likely the last generation of cars that Pagani will make before they have to adopt hybridization or ditch internal combustion altogether. By calling this car Utopia, Pagani pitched this as the ultimate and final hypercar. A Utopia for gearheads if you will.
With a manual gearbox and over 800 horsepower the Utopia puts Pagani back on top.
The Pagani Utopia Evolves Pagani's Design
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After a over a decade of Zonda's insane angular design language, the Huyara changed things drastically. Effectively every sharp edge saw rounding and smoothing off. Pagani's all-new Utopia at first glance appears to exist between these two previous generations of their car. With a less curvaceous design than the outgoing Huarya, the Utopia takes some inspiration from that first car, the Zonda. If anything the new Pagani looks understated. Launching in a color somewhere between beige and champagne, this comes as a far cry from the bright orange Pagani Zonda Cinque of old.
Staying true to their previous cars the Utopia uses a 6.0 Liter V12 engine from Mercedes-Benz AMG. According to Pagani on this outing, it produces 864 horsepower and a colossal 808 lb-ft of torque from as low down as 2,800 rpm. This means that the Utopia has acceleration has acceleration from torque at the lower end of the rev range as well as punch at the top given by the dizzying horsepower. Keeping true driving enthusiasts happy the car has the option of a manual 7-speed gearbox.
This Is How The Pagani Utopia Responds To The Koenigsegg CC850
With cars growing ever more complicated Pagani and Koenigsegg's latest cars come as the antithesis of this. Pagani himself writes, that in this project he follows "a principle of simplicity and elegance similar to what I have sought from day one in the new project". With this in mind, the Utopia comes available with either a manual or a dual-clutch transmission. The manual-equipped cars have a beautifully crafted gaited shifter. Ferrari ought to take notes.
Over in Sweden Koenigsegg's CC850 follows the same principles. According to Koenigsegg, this comes as an homage to the CC8S, their first car and thus mixes their old and current design languages. The CC850 like the latest from Pagani vows a return to simplicity by featuring a manual gearbox. The gated six-speed gearbox also has a slot labeled D. When a driver selects this, the car swaps to its second gearbox, an automated 9-speed gearbox. A pretty nifty system that draws inspiration from the Huarya. This car had paddle shifts but also a sequential transmission mounted to the floor. Think of this as a compromise between performance and driver enjoyment.
Pagani and Koenigsegg are rivals in the same way Lamborghini and Ferrari are. Both are smaller, almost boutique-level manufacturers who are products of the early 1990s. With one Italian and the other Swedish, one represents the old ways and the other the future. Koenigsegg pushes technological innovation to its limits. Be that taking the production car speed record or getting the most out of a 1.5-liter engine in the Gemera. But Pagani embodies the old ways, an engineer for Lamborghini whose cars come from Modena and nearly called his first car Fangio, in honor of his friend. By using a proper manual gearbox, without any trickery, Horacio Pagani shows the automotive world, that insane amounts of power can go through a manual box. The old ways are still best.
The Utopia Shows Up The CC850 Elsewhere
As one would expect from a car with a $2.2 million price tag the Utopia also has a wonderfully ornate interior. In the car's grand reveal, red leather adorns nearly every surface. Alongside lashing of carbon fiber and beautifully brushed metals. With flashes of the controls illuminating the cabin, in a peculiar way, this brings to mind Iron Man, in terms of the color scheme but not technology. The Utopia does not feature a large infotainment display, there's a digital display for the driver. But this does not take the place of dials and buttons on the center console.
The CC850 as an homage to the CC8S evolves the interior of that car. Mixing their current design languages and that of their car from two decades ago. With a center display and modern seats the CC850 updates older designs instead of replicating them. However, it does perhaps seem a little out of date with the air of its competitor the old Lamborghini Murcielago about it. By comparison, the Pagani Utopia seems classically inspired and perhaps even timeless.