Where 852 HP Meets Art Deco
Six years in the making, the new Pagani Utopia is a stunning work of art that marries incredible performance with dazzling looks. Theater, pure and simple, the ultra-modern Pagani Utopia breaks from the path of other hyper-cars as being a non-hybridized V12, with an optional manual transmission.
Too small a company to invest gobs of money into an in-house engine, Pagani has again chosen to tap the expertise of Mercedes Benz, stuffing their bullet proof twin-turbo 6.0-liter V12 AMG engine into the Utopia. Over the course of six prototypes, and two years of engine testing, the Utopia unleashes 852 horsepower and 811 pound-feet of torque, up a good bit from the now departed Huayra’s 791 horsepower.
Aside from no place to plug the Utopia in, the real stories are that of an optional stick shift and the integration of aerodynamics, removing the ghastly wing on the rear of the Huayra, that according to Pagani, produced more than 1000 pounds of downward force…at 175 miles an hour.
That the Utopia offers a manual transmission, seems to go against the fundamental rules of how fast you can shift yourself vs. how fast computers can shift for you. It is fun to row through the gears, an engagement missing in paddle-shift cars, no matter how much slower you are than an automatic transmission. Because you are slower, a lot slower. Everyone, or at least to that shrinking percentage of those that actually know how to drive a stick, seem to welcome this return, but I’m betting it’s a short lived game that’s about to sunset. It’s especially true at the exotic end of the sports car realm, where high horsepower is much better suited to a single or dual-clutch automatic.
Horacio Pagani obviously missed the message, and it’s very clear why he’s made a fortune in the hyper-niche sports car production world; he’s very good at listening.
Pagani said its clients wanted: “simplicity, lightness and the pleasure of driving”…
And to that end, the new Pagani Utopia delivers a 2800 pound car, V12 engine, and a shift-it-yourself option, though a single-clutch transmission is also available.
The real attraction to Pagani automobiles is the romance they offer, harkening back to the intricacies of Ettore Bugatti’s cars a century ago. Highly stylized with both tactile and visual sensuality that nearly all other modern cars lack. Fanciful, not trendy, combining speed and styling into a level of art coveted by many, available to a discerning few, only 99 are being produced at a base price of $2.2 million, and they are all spoken for.
Art deco inspired interiors, jewel-like in the making, Pagani’s automotive creations stand alone today in melding power, prestige and design into the newest of the line, the Pagini Utopia. Built, not bought is a common theme among the clientele of Pagani, and Pagani offers countless ways to make the Utopia yours, unlike any other. Though no performance figures are yet available for the Utopia but it’s obviously going to be brutally fast.
Utopia… noun: an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect.
