Collectors & Aficionados
Carpe Diem
The article recounts the story of Horacio Pagani, an Argentinian of Italian extraction who combined his passion for Italian cars, art, and technology to create the Pagani Zonda, an extreme GT road car.
It took an Argentinian of Italian extraction, driven by the force of the Zonda (the powerful wind that blows through the Andes), to combine, in a motor car, two quintessentially Italian traditions: art and technology. As a youngster growing up in Argentina, in the town of Casilda near San Fe, Horacio Pagani dreamed of Italian cars. Fangio was his idol.
Winter 1999, Horacio Pagani achieves his dream of creating an extreme GT road car that bears his name. It is the Zonda C12 S, unveiled in Geneva.
At the age of 24, he built his own Formula 2 single-seater to use in Argentine races. Fangio, then 68 and still on great terms with Mercedes, with which he had won two world titles, willingly accepted Pagani’s request to help him find a way of moving to Italy, specifically to Modena (where else?), in order to realize his passion. Pagani was ready to do any job at all, providing it was in the world of magnificent red sports cars. It was Lamborghini, at the time a growing company, that opened its door to him, and he tiptoed in. The year was 1982.
