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You Must Watch This: Behind the Scenes at Pagani

26 April, 2012

You have to watch this video. You simply must. It’s DRIVE‘s inside look at the incredible Willy Wonka factory of cars : the Pagani factory.

If you judged a car company on looks, innovation, performance and originality, Pagani would win best company on the planet. Their cars are striking. Beautiful and smooth yet forceful and intimidating. They are incredibly original, without being odd (Gumpert). The interiors look like space jewelry, which is what the interior of a 700HP hyper-car should look like. And they’re fast. So so so fast. For me, Pagani is at the top of the automotive food chain.

Impractical, expensive, flashy, so what. There’s so many reasons I love these cars. Their speed, rarity, and exclusivity is fine but that takes a back seat to the attention given to every. single. part. They make their own bolts. Bolts! The cars are made by a “family”-as Horacio Pagani (guess his title) – calls it. They produce 20 cars per year, with an attention to detail and gaps that would make a NASA engineer look like a blind monkey hammering together a bird house.

It’s the greatest fusion of art and engineering I can think of. (If anyone points to a building as a counter-point, I will throw it at you.) And there’s a very simple reason for the marriage of those seemingly opposite approaches to creation: it’s exactly what Horacio Pagani wanted. Through DaVinci he realized art and science can exist hand-in-hand, rather then opposing each other. That is why Pagani is what it is. But he didn’t make something half art and half engineering; it’s almost as if he took the total skill of an artist, and the smarts of a brilliant engineer, and combined them. He’s one man with the power of 2. I sincerely mean that.

That’s what so incredible about this video. The cars are amazing, the parts are gorgeous, and seeing how it comes together is an absolute treat. But hearing Horacio’s philosophy, his reason for Paganis being what they are, is what really captivated me, and brings a new appreciation to those parts and procedures that create these cars.

He wanted the cars to have a great personality, and be different from Ferrari or Lamborghini, without crossing to the extreme, where ugliness lives (Again, Gumpert). From his inspiration (DaVinci) to his realism (“If you try to achieve perfection, you will never finish your opera.”) I now completely understand how and why these cars are what they are. No one could have created something like this, other than him.

And JF Musial got to go inside, behind the Wizard’s curtain. Not only that, they let him film “anything” and he shows all of us how the cars came to be. I mean, complete access, to anything. When he takes the cover off one car – without supervision- I almost screamed “Dude, are you nuts?!” I thought it would result in a beating, if not by Horacio than by god himself. “How dare you touch such sacred carbon!!!!” But no. They welcomed him like, family.

Enough words. I apologize for keeping you. Put 24 minutes aside (yes it’s long, it’s worth it), and watch this video. You will get a new appreciation for what are arguably the best cars on the planet.