Horacio Pagani amazed everyone at the age of 12 with models of supercars carved from wood or clay. Today his dream has been transformed into a glittering reality.
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He made his debut into the world of racing cars when he was 20, designing an F3 that competed in Argentina under the colours of the official Renault team. Then came an enormous number of industrial design projects in which he had an accelerated apprenticeship, combining a mixture of creativity and a maniacal search for perfection.
Mr. Pagani met Juan Manuel Fangio, his childhood hero, who became the right person to introduce him to Modena, the home of legends like Ferrari and Lamborghini. And the miracle took place at Lamborghini. It was engineer Alfieri who provided the young Horacio with the space to express his imagination and manual dexterity.
Pagani started off as a third level mechanic in the bodywork department but was rapidly promoted to manager of the new composite material department. He took part in all the important projects of those years: the LMA Jeep, the restyling of the Jalpa, the design of the Countach Evoluzione (the first car in the world with a one hundred per cent carbon chassis), the Golf Caddy and the 4 valve Countach.
In 1988, Pagani set up Pagani Composite Research which carried out various projects, including the restyling of the Countach Anniversary, for which the company also supplied the final details in composite materials. At the height of this collaboration, Pagani worked with the team that designed the Diablo, the Lamborghini P140, the L30 and the Diablo Anniversary.
His dream to build his own supercar started to turn into reality in 1988 when the draft drawings of the "C8 Project" were shown for the first time to Fangio. The car was to be named Fangio F1 after Fangio as a tribute to the great champion and showed the respect that Pagani felt for him. In 1992, Pagani began to construct a prototype and the first model was tested in the Dallara wind tunnel in 1993. The positive results obtained marked the beginning of a long period of design and definition of the construction details.
After four more years of hard work, Pagani obtained type approval of the coupé open version of the C8 Project and the first Zonda C12 was presented in the 1999 Geneva Motor Show. Juan Manuel Fangio is no longer with us and Pagani has changed the name of his car to Zonda, the name of the wind that blows in the Andes, out of modesty and respect for the great man.
From its very first appearance it was made quite clear that it was not just one of the numerous prototypes destined to remain as concept cars, but "a dream that has been transformed into a glittering reality". ■
A low pressure wave forming along a cold front will track across the New England coast this morning, bringing a period of rain, heavy at times for much of New England, especially for Maine today.