Photos by Martin Vincent
When you have a favorite it not easily dethroned. Favorite color? Blue. Favorite food? Meat.
Since it’s inception this super car has had mixed appeal. The unconventional interior styling was something out of a handbag designer’s catalog and the tuned AMG powerplant’s screaming F1’ish exhaust note brought shivers down my spine. The carbon fiber was over the top and the entire car was built for function. Attention to detail was paragon. So if you were to ask what my favorite car was I wouldn’t hesitate to tell you it was the Pagani Zonda.
That might change.
The Pagani Zonda had a fantastic run but it was time for designer Horacio Pagani to introduce it’s successor. Quite large shoes to fill.
To start, the chassis was built from carbotanium and uses advanced composite materials first used on the Zonda R. The new car also incorporates hidden active aerodynamics to keep the car’s drag coefficient to a minimum while producing maximum downforce. The car achieves this using jet fighter style winglets on the rear and hood that flap up at speed to both slow the car and provide amazing grip through corners.
Like the Zonda, it’s successor is powered by a Mercedes-AMG V12. Though this time around it’s got two snails (read:turbos) producing 700hp and 740tq. Top speed figures 230 MPH and it sprints to 60 from a standing start in a blistering 3.5 seconds — on essentially standard issue Pirelli P-Zero tires no less! No wonder it’s named after Huayra-tata — a South American wind god.
We haven’t even mentioned the stunning interior and I’ll spare you that. It’s the attention to detail in features such as these that place the Huayra in a different league.
My favorite car is the Pagani Zonda but damn if the Huayra isn’t tugging on it’s sleeve and with only twelve in the United States and at a cost of over 1.3 million dollars chances are I’ll never own one. I may never actually see either cars in my lifetime.
Photos by Martin Vincent. Check out his work here.
