I love the story of Horacio Pagani, one of the great car designers of our time. If you’re not familiar with Horatio, I know you’re going to love this story.
Horacio is the creator of the Pagani automotive brand. And there’s a story that Horacio tells in many of his interviews that I think is just awesome.
Horacio Pagani
But way back at the beginning of his career, it’s when he actually describes it as the moment and it’s when he realizes he needs to create his own car. And so we’re going to look back at this story of Horacio in just a minute.
But here’s one of the reasons I love the first quote that I’m about to read. This moment really jumps out to me when I read all these great stories about history’s greatest creators.
There’s usually a defining moment when everything changes.
We saw it with the Enzo Ferrari episode I did, where Enzo says one of my favorite creator quotes ever. He says, “The time had come to see how far I could get by my own efforts.” And that’s the moment when he splits with Alfa Romeo. And he goes off on his own to build up the legendary racing team, Scuderia Ferrari.
And so check out that episode for the full story, but that moment from Enzo was in the book by Brock Yates. And when I read that line in the book, I was just like, I instantly knew it. There it is. That’s what I want to focus on. And that defining moment when Enzo realizes what he needs to do.
Now I have so much fun finding that moment as I’m reading these great old books about legendary creators. It just hits me.
I’ll give you few more quick examples. Carl Benz, his younger years were spent building and perfecting an engine. He needed a reliable engine that would power a horseless carriage. So before he could build cars, he needed to build the engine.
There’s a great moment for Carl Benz along with his wife Bertha. They finally got an engine to run smoothly in their tiny little workshop. After lots of struggle, it was on New Year’s Eve, Carl and Bertha Benz get their engine to start up.
And just stand there in awe listening to the sound of this little gas powered engine. Like Carl Benz says, this was his quote, he said, “I turned the crank, the engine started to go putt, putt, putt, and music of the future sounded with regular rhythm.” And that was his quote right there. How awesome is that quote from Carl Benz in 1879? He said that. So that still gives me goosebumps to think about the Carl Benz story.
Anyway, Carl and his wife would stand there and listen to this engine run for about an hour in their workshop. And he actually says he was, this is another quote, he was, “Fascinated, never tiring of the single tone of its song.” End of quote. And so Carl Benz talking about the first engine sound that they, they stood there listening to.
So I could go on and on every episode I’ve made has these moments that we, that we talk about.
I try to start out each episode with a quote that gets right to this exact point. And with the car creators stories. These moments are so cool.
There’s the Porsche 917 creators story I did, creators episode I did. They need to improve the original design of the car and the engineers and drivers are out on the test track and it hits them all almost at the same time. The air is not hitting the rear spoiler of the car.
So there’s no downforce holding the tires down to the track. And that’s the moment when they realized they have to build up the tail to create more downforce. And after that adjustment was when the Porsche 917 goes on to win almost every single race for the next two years.
And then I did an episode on Gordon Murray and that McLaren F1 and there’s this realization that Gordon has and he’s trying to figure out how his car is going to, like he said, how is it going to, “Set new standards,” is what he wanted to do, that was his quote, and how was he going to build the best car of all time?
And there’s the moment when he found his benchmark car and it was an unlikely car at the time, but he would go on to test a certain car. I’m not going to ruin the surprise for you and give it away, but he would, he would use his, certain car as inspiration to put many of the design features from that car into what would become the McLaren F1.
So we have all these cool moments in time that just really stick out when you’re reading these old books about these creators.
So now let’s get back to Horacio Pagani and his creator’s story. Like I said, Horatio gives interviews and he’ll tell this story over and over. And so there’s a few different variations of this story, but this interview is really great. It’s from ‘W Executive.’ And I think this will all make more sense once I read this excerpt for you. So here’s Horatio from that interview. He says, quote,
“I was left jobless because they were my only client. I was jobless but I had debts due to the construction of my workshop as well as personnel costs. It was really tough being a single customer company. I decided not to complete the new workshop but to continue in my old warehouse. I started to work for Formula One and several other clients. It was in that moment, probably one of the toughest for the car industry, that I decided I had to create my own.” -Horacio Pagani, from the ‘W Executive’ Interview
End of quote. So there it is exactly what we’ve been talking about. This is the beginning of the Pagani brand as we all know it today. This was the start.
Now Horatio continues here in the interview. He keeps going. He says, “It could have taken a very long time because I lack the economical resources, but regardless, I began to design it. My team counted very few people. I started working on the Zonda outside of my work hours. During work hours, I had to make a living. Therefore I was working on the car at night, early in the morning and on the weekends. That’s how the Zonda was born.”
End of quote. So that’s one of my favorite interviews of Horacio talking about that moment when he realized he needed to create his own car, which became the Pagani Zonda, the very first model that he ever built. So the interview is in Italian, so now you’ll have to read all the captions if you watch this interview.
But in that same interview, Horacio gives the origin story of his car company, the epic brand where he’s created some of the most amazing hypercars ever built over the last 25 years now. So originally I wanted to do an episode on the very first car created by Pagani, the Zonda C12.
And I just wanted to focus on that car alone. But this entire creator story of Horatio and everything leading up to the Zonda, it’s completely fascinating. And once I learned all about Horacio’s early years, I had a totally new appreciation for that Zonda car.
So to completely understand the Zonda, really have to know the entire Horacio creator story. So that’s what we’re going to get into here. Now let’s go back to the interview where Horatio explains his passion to create and why he decided to build some of the most beautifully designed cars ever made.
So in that same interview for W executive Horatio was asked why, why create cars? And here’s what he said. He says, “I’ve always loved art and I’ve always been good at it, but I was also curious about scientific topics. This led me to cars because it combined art and science. Then when I was 13 or 14, I learned about a person that was like a guide to me. It was Leonardo da Vinci, who I discovered through a magazine of my father’s. I read this sentence from Leonardo, ‘Art and science can go hand in hand.’ For a boy like me keen on scientific subjects as well as artistically inclined, it was a revelation that sparked a great curiosity.”
End of quote. So right there, we need to stop. And the reason I read this passage is because this discovery of Leonardo da Vinci when Horatio was only 13 years old, this magazine he stumbled on as a kid would set the stage for the rest of his life.
It’s a phrase that Horatio repeats in so many of these other interviews that I’ve seen. Art and science can go hand in hand is the quote that he says.
So let’s keep going from this interview. Horatio explains how he decided to apply this great da Vinci quote to car design. So Horatio continues. says, “Passion for cars and specifically for these types of cars came from the Argentinean magazine, Automundo, that mainly focused on racing cars, but also featured newly released sports cars, mainly Gran Turismo. Back then, there weren’t many brands, just five or six that were publishing about their work. So I saw the very first vehicles by Ferrari, Bertone, Lamborghini. To me, it was love at first sight. These cars seemed magical to me and I realized that it was going to be my job.”
Horacio, The Younger Years
So that’s a great quote right there from Horatio and maybe it’s just the way it translates to English, but that quote is awesome. He says at the end, to me, it was love at first sight. These cars seemed magical to me and I realized that it was going to be my job.
So if that doesn’t tell you all you need to know. And that’s exactly what he did. At a very early age, he was determined to work at building, designing, racing, whatever it took. He was going to make cars his main job. So now we have to go way back to the beginning. Horatio started out, he grew up in Argentina. As a young kid, he was building model cars, drawing cars, designing all types of vehicles.
By the time he was 20 years old, Horacio created his very own Formula 2 single-seat race car completely from scratch. So in another interview, this one’s with, ‘Drive Experience,’ Horacio explains more detail on his humble beginnings and what guided him in these early years. He talks about growing up in the rural area of Argentina and people didn’t really get into the arts or the technical subjects is how he put it.
But he was so lucky to stumble on that Leonardo quote that we just read about art and science walking hand in hand because now he could focus on trying to apply that mindset to his passion for cars. And that just wasn’t something that people around him were thinking about at this time. So he says how lucky he was for that to happen to him.
So young Horatio starts to go after his dream of figuring out the art and science of cars and he’s already designing and building his own car. So that catches the eye of a few very influential figures in the Argentina racing community.
From building his own Formula 2 race car he meets one of his idols, car designer Areste Berta. As he gets to know Areste Berta a little bit better he finds out that Berta knows another racing legend. Maybe the biggest name in all of racing in Argentina. A guy by the name of Fangio.
And so I have a book here on Pagani. It’s titled, ‘Hypercars D’Itore,’ by Italian author Daniele Bousanetti. And there’s some great stories in here of Horatio’s early years in this book. And this is an important part of the story because it’s the first time you hear the name Fangio. And so in this book, it says, quote, Arreste Berta, who had excellent relations with Fangio.
So you have to remember this part through his friend Berta Horatio meets Juan Manuel Fangio, the legendary race car driver. And we’re going to find out this is a big turning point in Horatio’s career, meeting up with Fangio.
But who is Fangio? We need to understand why meeting this guy, Fangio, was such a big deal. So here’s the book Hypercars D’Itore. This is how it explains it. Quote, “Horatio had grown up in the years shortly after the triumphs of Juan Manuel Fangio, the son of Italian immigrants. Five-time Formula One world champion and one of the greatest drivers in history. Fangio, considered a legend all over the world, was fundamental in sparking off a very strong passion for motorsport in the hearts of the Argentines.”
Okay, so don’t forget about Juan Manuel Fangio. He’s a key figure to this Pagani story and he’d become such an influence to Horacio that I read an entire book on Fangio.
I wanted to find out what made this guy one of the greatest race car drivers in history, so I found this book by Gerald Donaldson, it’s titled, ‘Fangio, The Life Behind the Legend.’ So here’s the very first page of that book. In the introduction it says,
“He always said the best way to win a race was by going as slowly as possible. But if in order to win he had to go faster than anyone had gone before, he always seemed to be able to do it. And as his former teammate and lifelong admirer Sterling Moss points out, you never heard anything bad about him. From his fellow drivers, you never heard anything but admiration and respect. Out of the car he was calm and courteous, a unique blend of charm, humility, and tough acumen.”
End of quote. So that was the introduction by Murray Walker in the book about Fangio by author Gerald Donaldson. Now eventually Horacio gets to meet Fangio and he tells Fangio that he wants to create grand tour cars in Italy. Horacio’s dream was to go to Modena, Italy. So with the help of his friend, Arresti Berta, Horatio gets to visit Fangio at his office in Buenos Aires.
And at the time, Fungio is president of Mercedes Benz Argentina. And Horacio makes his case and explains what he wants to do. He wants to go to Modena and design GT cars for the Italian carmakers. And he asked Fungio for a letter of recommendation so he can go to Italy and get a job. And Horatio was not just some kid off the street. He already had an impressive portfolio of cars and projects that he designed and built.
So he showed them all to Fangio, and impressed the legend race car driver enough that he agreed to write five letters of recommendation for Horatio so he could go apply to work at Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Lamborghini, and a couple others. And then before Horatio left the meeting with Fongio, he did get the blessing he was looking for, but Fongio made it very clear. He didn’t give these letters out to just anyone.
In fact, he said, “I’ve written several letters of introduction. But it’s only the second time I’ve written a recommendation.” And that was his quote. That’s exactly what he told Horacio at this meeting. So Fangio wanted to make it very crystal clear to Horacio that he needs to make good on this recommendation because he just doesn’t do this for anybody.
And I’m sure that pumped up Horacio even more to get out there and just get after it. So Horatio heads straight to Italy and applies for a job with the carmakers in the Motor Valley.
And Giulio Alfieri from Lamborghini offers him a job. So great, this is great. He’s off and running. He goes back to Argentina for six months. His girlfriend’s over there still, so he gets married to his girlfriend, Christina.
And just before Horatio and his new wife head back to Italy to start his new job at Lamborghini, he gets a letter from Alfieri. No more job offer. They pull the deal. So…
He gets this letter. What does he do next? He goes to Italy anyway. He shows up at Lamborghini and asks for any position they might have. And this guy, Alfieri, he’s like, what are you doing here? I sent you a letter. There’s no job. We pulled the position. There’s nothing for you here. And Horacio’s like, yeah, I know that. I got the letter, but I’m here anyway. What do you have for me? And Alfieri says, I don’t have anything for you. I can’t hire you. I tried to tell you that in the letter.
So Horacio works all these odd jobs. He works as a florist. He works as a steel welder. And they even live in a tent for a month because they just were trying to get by. And then he ends up going back to Lamborghini again. And he asked Alfieri, do you have anything now? How about now? And I’ll do whatever you have. you know what? Alfieri says, I can get you on as a laborer, the lowest level position in the company if you’re interested in that. And Horatio says, yeah, absolutely. I’ll take it.
So Horacio accepts the position as a laborer, the lowest level position. I’m sure he’s doing anything and everything, anybody asks him and he’s just flying up the chain of command at Lamborghini. So after a few years at Lamborghini, he realizes that the company really could use an autoclave. He wants to buy this autoclave.
And they said, so Lamborghini says, no, they don’t need an autoclave. And they say, you know, Ferrari doesn’t have an autoclave. We don’t need an autoclave. They’re, they’re big and they’re expensive and we’re not, we’re not, we don’t need one. Horacio, that same day, Horacio gets on his bike and he rides to the bank to arrange a loan to buy his own autoclave. He gets to the bank and they agree. They agree to help him buy this huge piece of equipment, this autoclave.
And so this is a great story. is what this is a ratio telling that story in this drive experience interview. Here’s how he says it. He says, “Until a day I was a pest and the General Manager told me if the Ferrari road car department hasn’t got an autoclave, why should we buy it? So that day I always went to work with my bike. I went to the Santa Agata Bologna’s Bank and asked for a loan to buy an autoclave. Maybe the bank director was madder than me and gave me the money. When I had the autoclave contract, back then in Italy there were maybe only four or five autoclaves, I went to the manager and told him, where can I put this when they will deliver it? And he told me, you are committed mad. Rent a warehouse and go on with your research. All that matters is to keep on working with us and your team.”
So Horacio comes back from the bank with the contract for the autoclave, he asks his manager at Lamborghini, he says, where can I store this new autoclave when they deliver it? Here’s my contract for it. He said, what are you crazy? He said, put it in a warehouse and just get back to work. We want you to do this stuff here with your team. And then he actually calls it, ‘hodgepodges.’ The manager at Lamborghini calls Horacio’s car parts. He says, just do your hodgepodges over there in this warehouse and you come back, just don’t leave us.
And so, and that’s exactly what Horacio does. He rents a warehouse. He puts his new autoclave in the warehouse. And then he starts to learn how to use this autoclave and how to make car parts with it while he’s still working at Lamborghini. So Horacio is building these car parts and he’s selling them back to his employer at Lamborghini. He knows the pieces that they need and that they could use for these cars. And so he’s making them with his own autoclave and then he’s selling them back to his employer.
And so, so he decides to start up his own little design company called Modena Design. It’s an engineering company for composite parts. And then he can just sell parts back to Lamborghini. And this will be his little side business. So, and so now this is working great. He knows what they need. He’s working there and he’s going to build them with his autoclave. He’s going to make them with his autoclave and then sell them back to Lamborghini. And this is working very well for him until.
The Gulf War hits and it just stops a lot of things. It halts a lot of projects that the car companies had under development and it hits Horatio’s little business, Modena Design. And this is when he realized he needs to diversify away from just a one customer company. And this is the quote that I read earlier. He needs to get other customers here because he only has one customer and they just shut down everything because of this Gulf War that just started.
So he begins to make parts for Formula One and several other manufacturers, whatever he can do just to keep money coming in to pay for his machinery in his warehouse. And then he also continues to work on his own car design this entire time. And if you remember from what he said at the beginning of the episode, he said this was the moment when he knew he needed to create his own car.
He realized that his business making car parts with his autoclave, that it was okay for the time. He wanted to go beyond that. He needed to take the next step and he knew this was it. He talks about this. So he says, quote, “Of course we could only dedicate ourselves to the project in the evening or in our little free time. We had to devote a lot of time to the construction, which was completed entirely with manual methods of the models necessary up for the manufacture of the final components in composite parts. Yet toward the end of 1993, the concept of the car and the project of the bodywork had been completed. Then it took another six years to complete the car.”
So it takes another six years after he had the parts and pieces for the concept. he keeps going, Horacio keeps going in this quote in the book. He says, “I was satisfied with the result, but did not have the financial means to produce the car at all. albeit in an ultra limited series. For the same reason, the car, even though it had been designed to house a 12 cylinder unit, was still without an engine. A problem that was difficult to solve precisely because of the cost.”
So if you can imagine, he’s trying to put this car together that he designed. He’s got all the parts and pieces, but he doesn’t have an engine. Now he’s starting to realize how much an engine is actually in a cost him.
So here’s a little bit more from that quote from the book. says, “At the beginning of the design phase, Horatio Pagani did not even have an engine available for the C8 project, his future supercar. He could only hope that once presented the prototype, a manufacturer would be interested in backing it.” End of quote.
So Horatio realizes he’s got a big problem on his hands. He says he’s working right in the middle of the land of the motors, is what they call this region in Italy where he’s at because all the famous car brands are all around him in this one area the land of the motors and Horacio’s right there in the land of the motors but he has no engine so he just doesn’t have the money for it so he’s stuck in the land of the motors without a motor and so he’s got this great car design that he really really likes he’s got all the parts and pieces that he’s been crafting over the years in his spare time but he needs to somehow get an engine into this car.
And there’s no way he could make his own engine. It would just cost a fortune. And he says it was totally beyond reach is how he said it. And so here’s how the book says it. They say, quote, “It was the impossible dream for a company that was already producing a miracle.” And so for Horacio to find a powerful engine for this car, it was going to be an impossible dream, they said.
Just barely scraping by to get the chassis and the bodywork completed and all these little parts and pieces. But now the giant task of an engine is now the next struggle. Now we keep going and the book describes how he begins to solve his engine problem. And don’t forget he has all those great relationships from his days in Argentina as a youngster that are going to come up huge in just a minute. So let’s see. Horacio heads back to Argentina to attend.
Juan Manuel Fangio’s 80th birthday party in June of 1991. The future founder of Pagani goes to see Fangio and what does he do? He brings along photos of his car that he’s been building and he shows Fangio and then he also says he could really use some help finding an engine for his car. And so the book covers this whole story. says Fangio at this point, he’d already been thinking about Horatio’s problem of an engine and how he could help.
And you won’t believe this, but don’t forget, at this exact time, Fangio had been president of Mercedes-Benz Argentina for 25 years. Now by 1991, Fangio is the honorary president. So he has major influence at Mercedes. And at this exact same time, it turns out Mercedes-Benz had been working on a brand new V12 engine that was super light, and super compact just exactly for high-end sports cars.
So Mercedes had an investment of 400 million marks to develop this new engine and it was a totally state-of-the-art design. And so Fangio tells Horacio about this new engine at his birthday party and I’m sure Horatio was trying not to just jump right out of his shoes when he was hearing about this new engine and the possibility of getting this thing in his new car.
I mean this is the perfect choice and it’s all falling right into place right in front of him. So what does Horatio need to do to close this deal? He needs to meet with the head engineer at Mercedes in Stuttgart, Germany, a guy by the name of Dieter Zeitsch. And he needs to hope that he’s going to like his car. So Horatio heads to Germany for the meeting and here’s what happens when he shows Dieter Zeitsch his car. This is how Horatio says it in the book, the hypercars deatory book. He says, quote,
“I remember that when he saw the drawing and renderings, the engineer Zeitsch observed, it looks like a timeless car. And I replied with warmth. “Thank goodness it’s a timeless car because I’m the one with no money and I’m going to need a lot of time to make it.” That’s what a ratio tells Dieter Zeitsch at this meeting. So the meeting goes well, but the deal’s not done. Zeitsch still wants to check out the factory and make sure everything Horatio has been telling him is actually true. And that he really has an actual factory to build these cars. So he wants to see it first.
So this is amazing. Horatio talks about this in the book too. And he’s mentioned this in other interviews. But what he does is he wants to make his humble, tiny little Modena Design headquarters warehouse that he’s been building where he builds these cars. He wants to make his company look a little bit bigger than it actually is. So Horacio has an idea.
He asks some of his friends to come over to the shop and he gives them coats to wear to make them look like they’re employees of Modena Design. Because Dieter Zeitch is coming in to inspect the property and Horacio doesn’t want to miss his big chance to land this deal with Mercedes. And so he needs to make his tiny little company appear maybe just a little bit bigger than it actually is.
And there’s a great quote from Horacio that he says about the results of the meeting here and his plan to dress up his friends at the company. So Horacio says, quote, don’t know if the expedient had any effect, but from that moment on, the subsequent relationship that still binds us to Mercedes came about. So the plan worked just fine. And just as exactly how Horatio wanted it to go, he pulled it off.
But of course, Dieter Zeitsch, the head of engineering at Mercedes Benz. He’s not just going to give his prize V12 engine just to anybody who makes a prototype of a car. He likes the design of course, and I’m sure he liked Horatio, but he’s really going off the recommendation of the racing legend Juan Manuel Fangio, who comes up huge for Horacio a second time with this engine.
So the first time by recommending him to the Italian car manufacturers, which turns into his first job at Lamborghini and sets him down the path of buying the autoclave so he can create his own car. And then the second time by recommending Horatio to Dieter Zeitsch for his brand new Mercedes Benz V12 engine for his new car. So if you’re wondering why Horacio mentions Fangio’s name in just about every single interview he’s ever done, this is why he had a major, major impact on his life.
And he changed it forever by backing him several different times. And this quote from the book by Horatio sums up that thought right here. It says, quote, “Once again, Juan Manuel Fangio, an F1 champion, but also a man of great sensitivity and intelligence who played an essential role in some key moments of my professional life helped me. I was still a nobody, but Fangio managed to persuade engineer Dieter Zeitch, at the time a member of the board of directors of Daimler-Benz and future president of the same company to have a look at the design of the car I was making.”
So he gets a Mercedes-Benz V12 engine that was groundbreaking at the time and this would turn out to be one of the most epic, well-known, reliable, trusted performance engines of all time. This AMG V12 engine. And he gets that engine in his car from the very start.
And now one more detail about that engine that I think is just fascinating. And Horacio talks about this during the ‘Drive Experience’ interview. But he says once he got that first Mercedes V12 AMG engine and he placed it into his Zonda car, he talks about how the engine was so much better than he could have even imagined. First of all, it’s a super powerful engine. But I’m sure he knew that already. It also had a lower center of gravity, which is a key factor for supercars. But more than that.
Horacio has this thing he calls in some interviews, he calls it the weight mania. He’s obsessed with keeping his cars as lightweight as possible. And when you get to know the Pagani brand a little bit more, you know this is a real mania, the weight mania. And so he gets this Mercedes AMG engine and it was lighter than he was planning, which as you can imagine, if you have a weight mania, he was just thrilled to see this engine lighter than he planned.
So here’s an awesome quote from that interview where he explains this excitement when he finally got his hands on this Mercedes V12 engine for the first time. Here’s what he says, quote, “He told me a lot about this engine. In fact, after meeting Zeitcsh and I received the first engine, the first thing I did since I have the weight mania, things have to be light. I placed it on a scale and I was surprised because I thought a sedan engine would be heavy, and I wanted to do a lightweight car. When I put it on the scale it weighed 70 kilos less than the Diablo engine. 70 kilos and the center of gravity was 40 to 50 millimeters lower. So I was really really surprised.”
End of quote. That was Horacio explaining the first time he got his hands on this Mercedes AMG V12 engine.
So, Horatio goes on to explain how lucky he really was. He knows how lucky, what a stroke of luck this was for him to get this exact engine. And looking back now, even with the connections Horatio had, and the incredible design for his car, and having his own autoclave, it’s still really amazing that he ended up getting this new Mercedes V12 engine. Just remarkable how that worked out in the end. So I have to read this because here’s how Horatio explains it. It’s pretty awesome. He says,
“I barely had the money to make the pieces, one by one, to make this car, and so thinking about the engine was absurd. We were talking about this yesterday with an English journalist. He was one of the first to interview me back in 1999, and one of the first questions he asked me was, why didn’t you build a Pagani engine? And I answered as I am explaining it to you now. Yesterday we met again, he thought and said, In the end, you have been lucky because you took an engine from the factory who invented the car. A 140 year old factory. And today a Rolls Royce has a BMW engine. A Bentley has a VW engine. A Bugatti too. Lamborghini mounts engines built together with Audi. So in the end, what we chose, even though it was the only choice, wasn’t wrong.”
So that’s awesome. So Horatio was talking about just how lucky he was, and how he’s now the only company that has Mercedes-AMG making the engine specifically for their cars. So even to this day, Horacio talks about the the match made in hypercar heaven, which is the Mercedes-Benz AMG V12 partnership that is still stronger than ever today. It’s really amazing to look back at how Horacio pulled that off and just not knowing how things would connect later on, but it’s just pretty amazing.
So now he’s able to finish his car complete with the engine and he’s ready to show it to the world. But before he does this, last but not least, he needs to name the car, which is a big deal with any car, but especially for the very first car of a new manufacturer in the motor valley of Italy. The name is everything. Someone who now has a V12 engine from Mercedes Benz with carbon composite parts from his autoclave and a design that is turning heads.
The name is a really big deal. So the name for the first Pagani model was always going to be the Fangio after the legend and the trustworthy friend that always had Horatio’s back. But Horatio is having second thoughts if this makes any sense. So he explains how he moved through this process of naming his first hypercar. And this is what he says, quote, In fact, the car was launched after six years at the Geneva Motor Show.
A month before the launch, I started to feel a bit scared because I loved Fangio. An intelligent and sensible person. He was the first to win five times the F1 championship. He was too much. A life coach. An incredible person. And I thought the car couldn’t live up to being named Fangio. So clearly you can see Horacio’s having second thoughts about naming his first car the Fangio. So he calls up his friends back in Argentina.
His buddies from way back when he was a kid, and he says this in the book, they were the same friends who encouraged him when he was very young as a kid. So these are trusted friends and he’s asking them for help. And in the book, here Horacio says this, says, quote, guys, I need your help to find me a name for the Fangio. And they sent me a name list among which there was Zonda, which was a name they liked as well. So why did they all like the name Zonda?
What’s with the name? Well, back in Argentina, there’s a track near the Andes called Autodromo El Zonda. So it’s a racetrack that’s very familiar in the racing community back in Argentina. And the name just stuck. Everybody loved the name. It suddenly made perfect sense to name the car Zonda and not deal with any questions on the car that was named Fungio. He didn’t want any controversy or any questions with the name since there was so much respect for his friend.
So the car became the Zonda. And just a month before the launch of the car at the Geneva Motor Show, Horatio changes the name of the car from the Fangio to the Zonda. And then of course the full name of the car would be the Zonda C12, with the C for his wife Christina and then the 12 being for the V12 engine in the car. Anyways, now we get into some of Horatio’s philosophy and what people found in his Zonda creation.
And the immediate impact it made on the car industry once it was unveiled. And this is from the book Hypercars D’Itori. This is the description of the impact and the unveiling of the Pagani Zonda. It says, quote,
“For years, he had been thinking about the personality and characteristics of the Zonda C12, which could be summarized in four fundamental benchmarks, a futuristic and provocative style, refined technology linked to the use of composite materials, which were essential for performance and safety as well as a reason for further charm, an official supply of the Mercedes-AMG V12 engine. The exclusivity of offering customers the possibility to create and closely follow the construction of their own car. There were certainly many reasons to have confidence in the new Motor Valley manufacturer, but the exhibitions, Geneva in particular, are crowded with innovations and time is always short for those who have to present their products and for those who have to discover their characteristics. Of course, if it hadn’t been immediately understood, the Zonda would have had many other chances to establish itself later, but there was no need. The experts looking for new products quickly found the Pagani stand.”
End of quote. So that lays it out, all the features and everything that Pagani was now going to offer. And in the car world, the time is short to make an impact. So lots of new things to show at Geneva, at the Geneva Auto Show. Are you going to stand out? And maybe it takes time for someone’s creation to be appreciated. But with the Zonda, it just says like it says in the book, there was no need for more time. It was understood instantly. So the book goes on to explain the impact of the Zonda a little bit more.
And then it was the introduction of the term hypercar is the argument they’re about to make. said the book says quote, meanwhile, the automotive vocabulary was being updated in view of the characteristics considered revolutionary at the time. The Zonda C12 was defined as a hypercar, a term that went beyond the previous concept of supercar and immediately entered the terminology of enthusiasts and end of quote,
So that’s the book arguing that it was the Zonda that ushered in this new phrase, hypercar. And some people will argue against that fact, I’ve heard, but the phrase starts to get used quite often just after the release of the Zonda. it makes perfect sense that this was the start of the hypercar. so then I stumbled on a great quote that simply captures what we’re talking about here.
And it’s from Chris Harris. If you like cars, you know who Chris Harris is. He’s the respected auto enthusiast he’s from England, but he, says this about Horatio during a documentary that I watched. It’s a great documentary. It’s called ‘Apex, the story of the hypercar.’ And in this documentary, Chris Harris is interviewed and he says this about Pagani. thought it was perfect. He says this about Horatio and I thought it was just perfect. Here’s what he says. Chris Harris, he goes, “If you had to imagine in your mind, the autocratic, charismatic, creator of probably the most impressive hypercar brand to emerge on its own in the last 30 years, you couldn’t actually make up Horatio Pagani. He’s perfect.”
So that was Chris Harris trying to describe Horatio hitting the scene in Italy with his new car designs. And so here’s another quote from Horatio explaining the enormous respect that he has for his car industry that he’s in. And it’s in his soft spoken and humble way just as always, but here’s what he says. I think this is really cool.
He says, “Let’s start by saying that I love the automobile. I love her and I have enormous respect for the others. I always try to send this message to the kids, to my colleagues. We have to build a unique car. We don’t have to make a better car than Ferrari or Lamborghini. We have to think that we are here thanks to Maserati, which made a car. Lamborghini made another one. Ferrari too. We are here thanks to them. So we have to respect the heritage, the history.” End of quote.
So that’s Horatio describing how much of a fan he is of the industry. And he just goes on in this interview to explain that he just ordered his own Ferrari and he really loves going to visit the Ferrari factory to check in on the car that he just ordered. So Horatio talks a little bit about the future of his company, Pagani. And here’s what he says when asked about.
The goals and the plans for the future. says, quote, “Our goal is to keep on investing on everything that evokes emotion, which is art. The pursuit of art is part of our DNA and we pair it with scientific research. Today, I had 10 signs printed that said, I think we are not as good as people think. I’m going to place them everywhere in here. He’s pointing around to the factory.” He’s going to put these signs up in his factory. And then he keeps going. He says, “It’s an incentive to keep working humbly, with curiosity, with a desire to learn and research to create something that evokes emotion. Our cars are not prescribed by a doctor. Our cars are useless in a sense. Clients are not forced to buy cars like ours. Therefore, to excite a person’s emotions so that they are willing to spend 3 to 15 million euro, you really have to work hard.”
End of quote, that’s incredible. He’s constantly hammering on this thought of just staying humble and paying respect to all the other automakers who came before Pagani. And then just how hard they have to work to please the customer, you know, just to hammer this point, just working so hard to surpass all the expectations that anybody could have. So, and then he closes the interview and he says this quote, he says, “I would like to close by saying that we’re not doing anything new. The idea of merging art with science was born with Leonardo da Vinci over 500 years ago. What we’re trying to do, humbly, is to bring forward this da Vinci concept, which is public domain still, of joining these elements together.” And so it’s just another thought that Horatio repeats in his interviews and books that I’ve read that Pagani is just building on this idea of art and science walking hand in hand.
It’s an idea that’s been around for hundreds of years. So he just keeps on repeating that just the humble, respectful and hardworking mindset that he wants everybody in his company just to keep at the top of mind. So let’s wrap this thing up. And like I said, at the beginning of the episode, I love this story of Horatio Pagani. It’s got everything. There’s a lot more to this story that I couldn’t get to, but it’s a start.
What I wanted to do originally was get into the actual design of these cars and what makes these cars worth millions of dollars and all the crazy design elements that go into these cars. And I wasn’t even able to get into any of that yet, but I will eventually, hopefully in my next Pagani episode. But I needed to talk about Horatio’s story first. I just did an episode on the old baseball legend, Hannes Wagner.
And in that episode we talked about the world famous baseball card, T206 Hannes Wagner card. And sports card collectors call it the Holy Grail of sports cards. Well, it made me think this is like the Holy Grail of car stories. And the humble car designer from the middle of nowhere in Argentina who stumbles on a magazine when he was a kid and reads a passage from Leonardo da Vinci where da Vinci says that art and science can go hand in hand.
And the 13 year old Horacio takes those words to heart and just commits his entire life to designing cars. And it just takes off like a rocket right from that point and all the way to Lamborghini. Forces his way in almost. Doesn’t take no for an answer. Just shows up and starts working at the lowest level. Works his way up and he just ends up riding his bike to the bank to get a loan for this huge piece of equipment that nobody thinks they need.
And then it’s the famous autoclave story that we talked about. I mean, this story is almost too good to be true. Just like Chris Harris said, like you can’t even make up this story, but it’s all absolutely true. And one of my favorite parts about this story is that Horatio is still building cars right now as we speak. He’s building his company and dreaming up the next hypercar model right now. It’s awesome. If you think about this, usually these fairy tale type stories are almost like
They’re like ancient history once you get to hear all about them, but not this Pagani story. It’s still just like halfway through and we get to see what Horatio has in store for us next and he could drop his next creation at any time. So this is an awesome story and I have plans to make my way over to Italy at some point and check out the Pagani factory. I can’t wait to do that and I’ll be sure I do an episode all about the visit once I get over there.
But now I hope you understand a little bit more about the Pagani cars. What I love about this journey and understanding the Horacio Pagani story is that it really makes you look at these cars in a totally new light. I mean, they’re amazing cars just on their own, knowing nothing else about them. But to know what Horatio went through to make his life’s vision turn into this reality, to create his life’s work through these amazing cars, that’s what I wanted to share with you here today.
The creator’s story, whether it’s Leonardo da Vinci painting a portrait 500 years ago, or it’s Horacio Pagani building a car with the 900 horsepower engine in it, where the owners of these cars, want to like, they want to park them in their living rooms because they just want to sit there and stare at these works of art on wheels. It’s the creator’s story that I’m after. And this is one of the best that I’ve stumbled on so far.
And what happens almost every single time is, just when I think I understand the entire story, I suddenly find out I need to now – Learn more.