On this episode of Ignition
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MotorTranscript
00:00 (engine revving)
00:02 I'm near Modena, Italy, driving not just any old
00:14 Pagani Zonda S Roadster, but Horatio Pagani's
00:17 personal Zonda S Roadster.
00:20 I know I don't need to say it,
00:26 but life doesn't get much sweeter than this.
00:28 (engine revving)
00:31 You spend enough time driving this thing
00:33 and you say to yourself, why would you ever
00:35 build any other type of car?
00:37 And I was asking Horatio Pagani this question,
00:41 and he said, you know, the problem is around 2003,
00:44 suddenly, all these hypercars showed up, right?
00:47 You had the Bugatti Veyron, you had the Porsche Carrera GT,
00:51 you had the Mercedes McLaren SLR,
00:54 and of course, the Ferrari Enzo.
00:57 And all of a sudden, the Zonda was just
01:00 a plain old supercar, it wasn't a hypercar.
01:03 So all the way back then, in 2003,
01:06 he began thinking about his hypercar.
01:10 What would it look like?
01:11 How would it drive?
01:12 What would it consist of?
01:13 Well, eight years later, he showed the world his hypercar.
01:18 And on this week's episode of Ignition,
01:20 I'm gonna drive it.
01:25 (engine revving)
01:28 (soft music)
01:30 (engine revving)
01:33 (soft music)
01:36 (engine revving)
01:44 (engine revving)
01:55 (soft music)
02:02 (engine revving)
02:05 The story of the Huayra isn't complete
02:21 until you see where they're built.
02:23 (soft music)
02:25 (engine revving)
02:28 The Huayra's carbon fiber central tub
02:39 is lifted onto a Pagani-designed rig,
02:42 the aluminum subframes are bolted in place,
02:44 and the hypercars are then constructed totally by hand.
02:47 Need some bolts?
02:49 Then just pop over to the cases holding the bolts
02:51 and fish out the number you need.
02:53 This is how cars were built a very long time ago,
02:56 and happily, Pagani continues this tradition.
02:59 There's no doubt in my mind
03:02 that completed Huayras are works of art.
03:05 The pieces and parts that comprise them are just as lovely.
03:09 The individual carbon fiber pieces are exquisite
03:12 and hand-finished in temperature
03:14 and humidity-controlled rooms.
03:15 The leather is of the same quality
03:19 that you'd find in high-end handbags.
03:22 Each aluminum piece, from the HVAC controls
03:25 to the gear selector, is a thing
03:27 you'd happily let live forever on your desk.
03:30 Quite literally, Horatio's workshop
03:32 is a candy store for car junkies.
03:35 As much fun as I had watching Huayras being assembled,
03:37 and of course, picking up and fondling random pieces
03:40 like the exhaust pipes,
03:41 I didn't come all the way to Modena just to watch.
03:44 I came to drive.
03:45 (engine revving)
03:48 (engine revving)
03:51 Driving a Pagani Huayra.
03:57 I mean, look, right off the bat,
04:01 this is an incredibly powerful car.
04:04 You've got the twin-turbo V12,
04:09 hand-built in Al-Fatabak by AMG.
04:12 730 horsepower, 764 pound-feet of torque.
04:18 (engine revving)
04:21 Hypercars are fast, we know all that.
04:24 That's not what this car is about.
04:26 Yes, it's faster than whatever you drive
04:28 and whatever you can imagine driving.
04:30 The whole thing with the Huayra
04:34 is that there's so much to experience.
04:37 You could sit here in the car
04:40 and just push these gorgeous,
04:42 machine-turned aluminum buttons all day.
04:47 The leather's exceptional.
04:49 The carbon fiber is exceptional.
04:51 It's not even carbon fiber, it's carbon fiber titanium.
04:54 This is just world-class.
05:02 I've never seen anything as gorgeous as this carbon fiber.
05:05 You drive something like this
05:10 and your brain just starts to wander off
05:12 to very strange places.
05:15 I think for a lot of people,
05:16 they might be thinking like,
05:17 how can I work hard enough to make enough money
05:19 to afford something like this?
05:21 My particular brain starts to say things like,
05:25 who did I trick, who did I fool?
05:27 Why am I able to drive this?
05:29 'Cause it's so different and so special.
05:33 That's just, it's such an incredible machine.
05:38 Without getting into the details,
05:44 I know for certain that a Huayra can hit 209 miles per hour.
05:47 And since there are about three places on Earth
05:54 where that's important,
05:55 I didn't feel the need to verify Pagani's claim
05:58 that the car will do 231 miles per hour.
06:00 As for straight-line acceleration,
06:06 they're claiming zero to 60 in 3.2 seconds.
06:13 Italians don't really get the whole quarter-mile thing,
06:15 but I think it's safe to say
06:16 that she'll run in the low 11 seconds.
06:19 (laughing)
06:26 I think I might just start doing U-turns
06:30 and running on straights all day.
06:32 You know, I spent a lot of time driving a lot of vehicles
06:36 that have the twin-turbo AMG V12,
06:42 and this is the only one that feels really fast.
06:46 Maybe because it's not coupled to that five-speed,
06:49 slow AMG transmission,
06:51 but this car, it's so quick.
06:56 Rarely felt cars that turn in like this.
07:06 It's unbelievable.
07:07 This car is as happy going left or right
07:10 as it is going straight,
07:11 and that's a very, very, very difficult thing to pull off.
07:15 Above about 50 miles an hour, 80 kilometers an hour,
07:25 the active aero kicks in,
07:27 and the four wings start working
07:30 in conjunction with the hydraulic lift on the front axle,
07:33 and it's unbelievable.
07:35 It's like, I don't even know how to describe
07:37 how this car holds the road.
07:39 (engine revving)
07:42 Horatio told me that when he started working
07:46 on the active aero system,
07:48 there was no one in the entire car industry
07:50 that could help him,
07:52 so he turned to aviation.
07:54 In the Huayra, not only are the four wings functional,
07:57 but just like an airplane,
07:59 there's actually a switch that allows you to test them
08:01 before you take flight.
08:03 It's way too much for this road.
08:05 I mean, this car is just destroying this road,
08:08 and this road is trying to destroy this car,
08:10 (engine revving)
08:13 but we're not gonna let it.
08:15 Things I don't like about the Huayra.
08:26 Well, this one's covered in this stupid wrap.
08:29 A few weeks ago, I saw one at Pebble Beach.
08:31 It was raw carbon fiber.
08:33 Absolutely gorgeous.
08:35 Sorry for the way this one looks.
08:37 We showed up.
08:38 This is the car they gave us.
08:39 You'll also notice I'm wearing my hat,
08:41 which usually I wear when it's very hot out
08:43 or I'm having a bad hair day.
08:44 However, today, there's a piece of glass above my head,
08:48 and it's baking me.
08:49 And then there's the low-speed handling of this car.
08:55 And so if you drive something like the Veyron,
08:58 what freaks you out about the Veyron
09:01 is that as you're running around in the parking lot,
09:04 and I know everyone's said this,
09:06 but you might as well be driving a Volkswagen Golf.
09:08 It's so easy to maneuver,
09:10 so easy just to creep along at five miles an hour.
09:13 This car isn't, but again, who cares?
09:16 Just forget all that nonsense.
09:18 All these critiques are pretty meaningless
09:19 because this thing just goes like nobody's business.
09:24 Oh my God.
09:28 As you're driving and hammering it,
09:36 I mean, you're being overwhelmed
09:38 by the ferocity of the velocity,
09:40 the braking power, the turning ability.
09:42 It's just such an athlete.
09:44 And then as you kind of slow down and look around,
09:49 it's like, God, look at the leather, look at the stitching,
09:52 look at this aluminum, look at this carbon fiber,
09:54 like the weird little air vents that are gorgeous.
09:58 And it's like your favorite album.
10:00 One of my favorite albums is Paul's Boutique
10:02 by the Beastie Boys.
10:03 And I've been listening to that record for over 20 years now
10:07 and every time I listen to it, I hear something new.
10:10 And I think every time you drive this car,
10:12 you're gonna notice something new.
10:15 I'm gonna floor it 'cause it's a straight.
10:17 Oh my God.
10:18 (laughing)
10:20 I really think you would figure something else out
10:26 that you hadn't noticed before.
10:28 (car engine roaring)
10:32 I just keep noticing things
10:34 and being pleasantly surprised by things.
10:36 Like, you know, I just was making a left turn,
10:38 I looked down, I noticed that goofy little point
10:41 of the rear view mirror.
10:42 And I think that's the point of the Huayra.
10:48 Is it the fastest car in the world?
10:51 No.
10:52 Is it the absolute best handling car in the world?
10:55 No.
10:56 Does it cost too much?
10:57 Yes.
10:58 It's a $1.4 million.
11:00 It's the same price as a LaFerrari.
11:03 And it doesn't make as much power
11:05 and it's not gonna be as quick,
11:06 but you just won't care.
11:09 There's 80 guys in a building in Modena making this thing.
11:15 You know, it's not some mega national corporation,
11:18 you know, with all the best engineers available.
11:21 I mean, this is, you know, one man division
11:24 and I just love cars like that.
11:27 (dramatic music)
11:30 I get to spend a great deal of time
11:37 playing around with the greatest cars in the world.
11:39 But even supercars can grow routine.
11:46 The Huayra, on the other hand,
11:49 I simply wasn't prepared to be this impressed.
11:56 The Huayra is Pagani's masterpiece,
11:58 both as a company and as an individual.
12:02 Nearly every single aspect of the car is mind-blowing.
12:05 But more than that, every single aspect
12:07 represents one man's singular vision
12:10 of what an automobile should be.
12:12 Of course, there is no perfect car,
12:15 but until that time, the Pagani Huayra
12:17 is number one in both my mind and my heart.
12:20 I'm awed, really and truly awed.
12:23 (dramatic music)
12:27 (gentle music)
12:30 (gentle music)
12:32 (gentle music)
12:35 (gentle music)
12:43 (gentle music)
12:58 (gentle music)
13:01 (gentle music)
13:03 (gentle music)
13:06 (gentle music)
13:09 (music)
13:11 [Music]