Horacio Pagani was born in 1955 in Casilda, in Argentina, the son of a baker, and was building model cars out of balsa wood as a boy. As a young man he built a Formula Three car and dreamed of working in Italy.
The door opened through Juan Manuel Fangio, who wrote letters of recommendation for him. In 1983 Pagani moved to Italy and joined Lamborghini, where he became head of the new composite-materials department and worked on the Countach, including the anniversary version of the late 1980s.
In 1991 he set up his own company to work in carbon fibre and composites, and in 1992 founded Pagani Automobili near Modena. His first car was to be called the Fangio F1, in honour of his mentor; after Fangio died in 1995, Pagani named it the Zonda instead, after a wind in the Andes. It appeared in 1999.
Pagani builds a few dozen cars a year, each as much an object of craftsmanship as of speed, down to the bolts, which carry the company’s name. The Huayra followed in 2011 and the Utopia in 2022.
The Huayra R in this catalogue, a track-only version, is one of his most extreme cars.
Foto: Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
What he built
Cars in the catalog that carry his work — or his name.
