At automaker dinners, you’ll often find designers scribbling on their napkins. To design is their compulsion, and if you ask them to sketch a car, they sure as hell won’t draw a Pinto. Invariably these sketches lean swoopy and sleek, even though in their day jobs, designers are most likely to lay down the stolid lines of some anonymous people-mover.
Not so for Horacio Pagani. His wildest dreams are not simply napkin fodder. Instead, they become reality.
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Photo by: Sevian Daupi / Motor1
Signore Pagani has penned three stone-cold classics, sexy languid wedges with eyes like insects and the primal appeal of Sofia Loren. They are romantic, vaguely steampunk, totally Italian, and undeniably Pagani. Designing apex hypercars is every five-year-old’s dream—and every designer’s dream, of course. But it’s also a mountain of responsibility when hundreds of jobs—from laborers and designers to contractors—are on the line.
Build a car for such a limited market, and if it’s not well-received, the foundation crumbles.
So when Pagani launched just the third vehicle in its decades-long history last year—the Utopia—the stakes were as high as ever. It’s a terribly interesting tension to explore.
We sat down at Pagani’s Modena headquarters to discuss the topic in an exclusive, one-on-one interview with Horacio Pagani. We chatted about the fineries of chasing perfection, but in particular, the process of designing and realizing a car like the Utopia.
[Ed’s Note: This interview was translated from Italian to English in real-time by Horacio’s son, Christopher Pagani. The recorded interview tape was then translated separately by our colleagues at Motor1 Italia, and the two transcripts were combined and edited for clarity.]
Photo by: Sevian Daupi / Motor1
The writer and The Boss at Pagani HQ.
It all started on the floor.
“Before I talk about the Utopia, I want to give you a little background,” Horacio Pagani says, leaning the elbows of his sport coat onto the glass conference table.
While one Pagani model is in production, he explained, the next one is well into its development cycle, far further along than you’d guess. The new model lives always in the ether, stuck somewhere in Pagani’s head.
“When the Zonda S came out in 2001-2002, I had already started to set up the Huayra, which came out 10 years later.”
Pagani Huayra Roadster BC
On holiday in Calabria at the turn of the century, Pagani brought along his drafting supplies, never one to stray from his work. One morning, inspiration struck.
“I didn’t have a drawing table, so I drew [with the paper spread on] the floor,” Pagani said. He pulls up an image of the drawing and you can still see where Signore Pagani’s hand-penciled lines were interrupted by a tile joint, mid-stroke. “There the setting started.”
Pagani leaned back in his chair and spread his hands apart, glancing at a poster of the Utopia, as if to reinforce the point.
Photo by: Sevian Daupi / Motor1
‘I didn’t have a drawing table, so I drew [with the paper spread on] the floor.’
The Utopia was not designed yesterday, but conceived over years, starting life as an imaginative spark, but then labored over for years by in-house designers and engineers. Only once the first lines have been laid to paper, can the slow decade of development begin in earnest.
As such, there’s no set cadence for Pagani production. Only a sense that, when the tastes of a generation begin to change, so must Pagani Automobili. Subtle signs signal to Pagani that a new era must begin.
“There were things that made the Zonda become an iconic car. But I see the kids who come to the museum,” Pagani said. “I ask them, ‘What is your favorite car?’ and they say, ‘The Huayra,’ not the Zonda.”
So with the Huayra aging and new generations of devoted fans entering the Pagani museum, the time was ripe. But how do you nail cutting-edge taste (hypercars always let us glimpse of the future) in a car with a decade-long gestation?
Simultaneously, how do you build something to last? The Huayra—and especially the Zonda—accomplished both.
“It’s the hardest thing, to work on things that are timeless,” Pagani answered. “There are so many beautiful things around, you’re always going to find amazing things to add to your car that would look immediately beautiful. But then after some time, you will see them age very quickly, because sometimes they are too edgy, or they are too current, and they don’t stay, they don’t last.”
Photo by: Sevian Daupi | Motor1
‘It’s the hardest thing, to work on things that are timeless.’
Pagani listed a handful of supercars, old and new, contrasting their design qualities. He’s far more critical of his own cars than his competitors’, he notes, but his taste in the exercise skewed to cars of the 1990s and 2000s, when analog instruments filled the cabins, not a single touchscreen in sight.
“If I get into the Porsche Carrera GT, I look at the interior, I get this sensation inside that for me, nothing has aged; There is a key to start the car in a traditional way, it’s just my taste.”
It’s the reason you won’t find a big, gaudy central screen in the cutting-edge Utopia. Hindsight. Also time.
Photo by: Sevian Daupi / Motor1
No central screens here
That’s the benefit of a decade-long timeline to build a new vehicle. Pagani is able to let an initial design age for a year or two to gauge its longevity, while mainstream automakers compress the process into half the time.
“We work on the design a lot and we let it age, right? We let it age for maybe a year or two, and then we realize if it has aged immediately or not. And then we have an extremely critical sense. That is, we do not fall in love with the work we are doing,” Pagani said.
He explained that while his team feels a responsibility to the work, they must also approach it with objectivity. They must maintain a critical sense of the car at all times.
Photo by: Sevian Daupi | Motor1
“We tend not to fall in love with our creations. This is to keep the distance between what you are designing.”
The more we talked, the clearer it became; Pagani approaches his designs more like a craftsman than an artist. These cars are flights of fancy, for sure. Just look at them. But they are also, from the moment they roll off the production line, simply cars that must be sold.
“We are a small family business that has to make things that customers buy. We can’t make cars just to please our ego. We have to make cars to please the customer’s ego.” Pagani said.
“If the Pagani customer tells you that he’s not interested in a hybrid vacuum, even if it has 1,200 horsepower or 1,000 horsepower, you have to listen to him. He has really refused the hybrid car. You have to try to please him. If he says he wants a naturally aspirated or turbo V-12, you have to try to go in that direction.”
Photo by: Sevian Daupi | Motor1
‘We tend not to fall in love with our creations. This is to keep the distance between what you are designing.’
At the end of the day, Pagani said, his customers are the focus. They ultimately judge Horacio Pagani’s success as a designer and Pagani Automobili as an automaker. They provide direction and clarity.
To that end, you’d consider the Utopia an immediate success. Automobili Pagani’s track record ensures its cars are sold out for the better part of the next decade, with customers purchasing vehicles that haven’t even been unveiled, or perhaps even designed.
That faith allows for a long roadmap, a plan adaptable to ever-shifting legislation and consumer taste. Customers believe Pagani will deliver, no matter what, and they’ve put money on it.
Photo by: Sevian Daupi / Motor1
A rarely seen room at Pagani HQ, where cars are customized
“In December 2023, we made the organizational chart with the team of people who will work on our new projects until 2032,” Pagani said. “If we look at other brands, they are moving to make SUVs, to make electric cars, to make hybrid cars, et cetera.”
Pagani doesn’t chase that nonsense. Even Ferrari builds an SUV now, and many hybrids, but Horacio Pagani knows it’s not what his customers want.
“The market responds to you the moment it buys something. I mean, if you make a magazine, you don’t ask the consumer if it’s a good magazine… When you have managed to sell all the magazines, it means you have made the right product.”
Photo by: Sevian Daupi / Motor1
As with the other times I’ve interviewed Horacio Pagani, he’s key to point to Pagani’s continued investments in vertical manufacturing, product development, and especially the training and retention of employees.
You’ll never find a set of happier workers in the company cantina. The Utopia’s design may have started with a spark, but ultimately, a team of bright minds and capable hands moved the car from idea to reality, Pagani said.
“At the end of the day there’s nothing left to do but invest in people, ensuring that education always grows, the know-how and the possibilities to create extraordinary things in the future. But it has to come from within.”
