Horacio Pagani is a little crazy. Maybe more than a little crazy. Obsessive, even. Maybe even the full boat, you know, obsessive-compulsive. It’s not just that he’s the last one leaving the office every night. After all, his name is on the door. Nor is it that, when his flock of expert machinists and loyal engineers come in each morning, they’re as likely as not to find a little piece of paper on their desk — or lathe — detailing changes that were inspired by his previous night’s office ruminations.
It’s not even that every single bolt on all his eponymously-branded cars are etched with his name. The need to cast a net as wide and prolific as this is hardly unknown in the animal kingdom, especially amongst the alpha males that make up the supercar world. Likewise, every single one of the badges adorning a new Pagani Utopia, like all his previous cars, is machined from a raw block of aluminum. No, Ferrari and Porsche don’t do that. Not even Koenigsegg.
Nor is it even that the inside of a Pagani supercar is literally a work of art. Bugatti’s magnificent new plug-in V16 Tourbillon features a brilliantly executed Swiss-watch-like homage to Pagani’s art d’oeuvre interiors, but, even with a price tag of US$4.6 million, that company was limited to hand-crafting just the steering wheel and instrument set. In a Pagani, the entire interior is hand-crafted. There’s nothing else like it in the automotive world.
Speaking of steering wheels, the Pagani’s is a CNC’ed work of art. Starting with a 43-kilogram hunk of aluminum, it takes 26 hours of computer-aided machining — and eight more hours of hand-polishing — to create a Pagani steering wheel. Many of those hours — perhaps a third — are spent hollowing out the steering wheel so that what was once close to 100 pounds ends up weighing barely more than a kilogram.
But, even if that be obsessive, the compulsion is easily justified. Lightness is next to godliness in the supercar world, and to get to the Utopia’s (relatively) featherweight 1,280-kilogram status — despite that great hulking mass of a Mercedes-Benz V12 amidships — requires dedicated obsession, perhaps even of the compulsive variety.
But the steering wheel isn’t the only thing machined from scratch. Pagani’s latest division, Modena Design, has no fewer than seven new Japanese CNC machining tools — each about as big as my childhood bedroom — working 20 hours a day, seven days a week. That’s an incredible amount of hardware considering that Pagani’s main “factory” only builds about 50 cars a year. That’s because the machine shop — so nondescript on the outside; surgery-room-clean inside — produces no fewer than 820 parts per car. Nothing, not even little detail pieces hidden behind bodywork, escapes Pagani pere’s attention to detail.
Indeed, that’s where Horacio’s possible descent into truly maniacal compulsion might start. His latest creation, the Utopia, is powered by a rip-roaring Mercedes V12, not an electric winding or battery in sight. It, of course, requires a huge amount of cooling oil — 12 litres, in fact — which is, as is customary with true high-performance engines, housed in a dry-sump lubrication system.
And, like all ICE-powered vehicles, it has a dipstick, the sole purpose of which, as everyone knows, is to determine if there is enough of that lubricating oil to quell the big twin-turbo’s tendency to generate heat. And, as anyone who has ever checked their car’s oil level can attest, a dipstick is normally just a simple piece of flat steel, “min” and “max” lines stamped into its tip at an appropriate depth.
Not the Pagani’s dipstick. No siree Bob! Part of it is knurled, some of it is milled, and still others sections are etched. Then the tip is anodized. Bright red, no less. All for something no owner of a $3.5-million supercar will ever see. Oh, some high-priced mechanic is sure to get a giggle, but even then, the craftsmanship will be at least partially obscured by used — and therefore dirty — motor oil. Even I, as someone who admits to more than a little obsession when it comes to all things mechanical, thought this a compulsion too far. Hell, the damned thing will spend 99.999999999% of its time in a freakin’ oil bath.
But here’s the thing — and I hope that, by now, you’re beginning to appreciate this is a big “but” — this is still obsessive-adjacent. The real tour de force — that which, in a million years of obsessing, I could not have come up with — is the oil filler cap.
As it arrives from Mercedes, the cap is made of plastic. Of course, that would simply not do. So, naturally, its replacement is machined out of yet another block of aluminum, this time by yet another Japanese machine, this one a truly rare beast that can operate as both a lathe and a milling machine simultaneously. It was the first of its kind I’d ever seen. And, if you’ve been following along at all, you know the top of the cap is etched with the Pagani logo.
Except that the one I saw, seemingly polished to its final form, bore no such identification at all. Indeed, as initially assembled, a Utopia’s oil cap is the one piece of hardware that appears devoid of any “Pagani” script.
That’s because Horacio insists that every Pagani that leaves the factory has the “Pagani” lettering on the oil cap perfectly aligned with the oil container, as well as precisely perpendicular to the frame rails. In other words, every time someone checks or adds oil to any Utopia anywhere in the world, the alignment of the oil cap’s Pagani logo will end up in exactly the same orientation.
Considering the variability of the rubber gaskets sealing the cap itself, the tolerances in the oil tank’s mounting hardware, and all the other things that make up the human error endemic in the construction of anything mechanical, the only way to ensure this alignment is perfect is for the company’s machinists to assemble the whole car, install a special jig into the engine bay, mark each car’s oil cap individually, and then meticulously machine the logo into its top.
This happens just before the car is delivered to the customer and is, according to Leonardo Pagani, the master’s eldest son and he in charge of those CNC machines at Modena Design, virtually the last thing done before a Pagani is deemed complete.
I am not sure if that a little bit crazy or a lot crazy. I, not being a trained psychologist, also have no idea if this kind of behaviour can be considered obsessive, -compulsive or otherwise. What I do know is that this is the kind of attention to detail and dedication to artisanship that creates a waiting list for your cars, even when they cost nigh on four million bucks. Horacio Pagani is the most successful of boutique automakers because even his freakin’ dipsticks deserve to be in the Guggenheim.
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