Flat out in the Pagani Huayra BC

A stray dog is standing obstinately in the centre of my turning circle. I am mid-manoeuvre, trying to turn and point the Huayra BC back up the road for another pass through a picturesque set of corners that opens onto a long straight, and said dog is completely unphased by the €2.3m, 789bhp rolling carbon-fibre work of art using him as a mobile mini-roundabout.

As I wait for the photographer to reposition and call me through, my slightly careworn canine friend is eyeballing the car with an unmistakeable gleam: it seems that Horacio Pagani’s newest creation has an early admirer.

As I set off for another pass, so does my new four-legged fan club, keen to demonstrate that dogs are better than hypercars. The most uneven contest in drag race history doesn’t last long and as I fire off up the hill, the supercar-hunting beagle shrinks in the mirrors. I can almost feel his canine disappointment.

Photography: Rowan Horncastle

This feature was originally published in the April 2016 issue of Top Gear magazine.

But it’s time to concentrate. Exiting the final turn in the set, I pin the throttle and feel my neck muscles strain. And strain some more, my head not so gently forced backwards as 811lb ft pours through the rear 355/25 Pirelli P-Zeros.

The Sicilian countryside peels back at the edges and fires out of the rear-view mirror through the letterbox between the BC’s rear wing and the tail-mounted mobile ailerons as they dance and adjust to optimise downforce. It doesn’t take long to figure out that this is a seriously fast car, a brutal assault on the senses, and I quickly form the opinion that small and perfectly formed Sicily might not be quite big enough for the BC.

The initial assault plateaus slightly as we pass 5,500rpm, but as we hit 6,000, it’s time for another gear and after a brief interlude, another sizeable volume of Sicilian atmosphere is sucked up by the V12’s huge turbos and detonated rearwards. This island is definitely not ready for fifth, unless I want to bury BC no.2 into the side of Mt Etna, so it’s time to jump on the bespoke carbon ceramics, which bite and slow Sicily down... sometime later, I remember to breathe.

Rewind. Let me explain what I’m in and why I’m here. The Huayra BC is Horacio Pagani’s latest hypercar. In a lineage peppered with some of the most unique automotive creations on the planet, the BC is a rolling tribute to someone without whom the Pagani brand would have remained a few scribbles on a sketch pad: Benny Caiola. Caiola – who passed away in 2010 – happened to be Pagani’s first-ever customer and a man who was so taken with Horacio’s passion to create automotive works of art that he became a lifelong Pagani fan and mentor.

Over breakfast (an act which in itself gives you some insight into the fastidious attention to detail that invades Horacio Pagani’s life: he starts with a gluten-free flatbread lightly toasted over charcoal, ricotta is then lovingly layered across its surface before an even thatch of rucola is applied, the resulting confection folded accurately in half), Horacio talks passionately about Caiola and the pressure of creating a car that needed to do justice to the memory of the man. It’s a tribute and a requiem. For Horacio Pagani, only the best would therefore do.

Breakfast consumed, Horacio is keen to walk me around the BC and explain the detail – as you may have guessed, Pagani is all about the detail. And this is a fairly hefty transformation of the type. For a start, the purity of the Huayra’s original form has been modified somewhat in the pursuit of downforce. Pagani spent months working with Dallara on the aero, resulting in the modification of every panel of the original car, with the exception of the roof.

The final shape is striking, complex and aggressive, and probably better shown off without this two-tone paint job. Pretty? I’ll leave that decision to you. But it looks… purposeful. The complexity of the aesthetic reworking is a visual touchpoint to the fanatical massaging of minutiae and general technomancy that lies beneath. As the front and rear bodywork are hoisted and the guts of the thing exposed, Horacio gets animated.

We start at the front, where the external aero work is complemented by plenty of internal fettling (mainly to reduce drag and optimise the flow of cooling air across mechanical components) and work through from there. There are channels and intakes galore.

The new bespoke Brembo carbon-ceramic brakes come equipped with six-piston calipers (four-pot rears), are generously sized at 380mm and also happen to be six per cent lighter than those fitted to the standard Huayra. The forged APP wheels – 20 inches at the front, 21 on the rear and delivering a further 9kg weight saving – are wrapped in Pirelli P Zero Corsa rubber, developed in conjunction with the manufacturer.

You know I mentioned attention to detail? Each tyre uses 12 different compounds across the section to maximise performance. And there’s more. The suspension uprights and wishbones are made from Avional, a lightweight aluminium alloy usually used in aeronautical applications, reducing the weight by 25 per cent. The dampers are, again, bespoke Öhlins creations, and the BC sees the first use of a new and as yet unnamed type of carbon fibre which is claimed to be 50 per cent lighter and 20 per cent stronger than ‘regular’ weave.

At the heart of the BC sits the now familiar 6.0-litre AMG V12 bi-turbo, uprated to deliver 789bhp  and 811 torques to the wheels through all-new tripod drive shafts – a technology and design derived from Le Mans prototypes.

Most significantly, the mighty V12 meets CARB (California Air Resources Board) and EU6 emissions legislations – no mean feat for such a big motor – and Pagani has a commitment from AMG that it will continue to supply engines (and engineer them to pass for emissions testing) until 2023, something that guarantees a V12 Pagani future.

Transmitting all that power and turbo torque to the wheels is an all-new seven-speed automated manual transmission developed from the ground up with Xtrac, and mounted transversely to focus the mass towards the centre of the car. After all, better c-of-g means better turn-in and stability. It’s still a single-clutch ’box, but features new electro hydraulic actuation and carbon-fibre synchronisers (Horacio likes carbon fibre), halving shift times from 150ms in the standard Huayra to 75ms.

No zeitgeisty double-clutch? Pagani argues that the combined weight of ’box and sympathetic electronic diff is 40 per cent lighter than a current generation DSG. And the BC is all about staying nippy.

More? The V12 exhales through an exhaust system that would be as happy mounted on the wall of the Saatchi Gallery as installed in the back of a supercar. Made from titanium, it weighs 2.9kg, a staggering 7.1kg lighter than the standard exhaust. All this fastidious and unrelenting attention to development delivers a total weight saving of 132kg… or the weight of a new-born elephant. Actual fact.

Inside, the BC is a predictably special place to occupy, in this case the combination of deep red leather, anthracite suede and matt carbon fibre contrasting with inky gloss-black highlights demonstrating Pagani at its best. If you’re in any doubt, the naked gear linkage remains one of the most beautiful mechanical creations of all time. 

Briefing over, we leave Horacio to his morning constitutional, twist the BC’s key and fire up to Sicily’s mountain pass with Etna looming in the distance. Time to find out if it feels any different.

The first thing that strikes you is how supple the BC feels: there’s a compliance in the chassis that allows it to isolate where other hypercars would crash. There’s also a refreshing simplicity in its operation. Simply press the somewhat unassuming button on the steering wheel and dial through the settings, Comfort, Sport and Race... and beyond that your options boil down to whether to change gear via the stick or paddles.

Despite the complexity of its design, the simplicity and usability is something Horacio is particularly proud of, as is his focus on the safety of his customers: you can turn everything off in the BC, but it has a fail-safe, which reactivates traction control if it senses the temperature drop below nine degrees. Icy road embarrassment foiled.

As for the driving, it’s obvious the steering is sharper than in the original Huayra, the brakes are comfortingly mighty, the power delivery immense. But having experienced the aural insanity of the unboosted V12 in the Zonda F, I can’t help but miss its nerve-shredding soundtrack and epic rev range.

The bi-turbo V12 is hugely potent at the bottom end, but, by 5,500, its initial bite tails off and, by 6, it’s pretty much done. That’s not to say that it’s not startlingly fast, but that it makes power in a different way to the older naturally aspirated cars. The same can be said of the noise – immense but a different flavour when equipped with chittering blowers.

The reality is that for Pagani to survive it had to go turbo, but, more importantly, managing emissions opened the door for what is now Pagani’s biggest customer base, and Benny Caiola’s home market, the USA. With AMG promising a continuous supply until 2023, the bi-turbo V12 allows the story that Benny was instrumental in starting to continue, and with all 20 €2.3m BCs sold and orders being placed for a Huayra BC Roadster, it’s clear that the Pagani journey has a way to go yet.

To be honest, this pre-prod drive merely served to whet our appetite. The BC is designed to operate at the edges of the performance envelope and on this road, on this day, with a small dog as company, we’re merely scratching the surface. We need bigger roads, more space and more room to fully deploy the BC’s extraordinary abilities. But our initial exposure leaves us wanting much more. The BC clearly has depths to explore, something we’ll be doing later in the year.

As we return the car to the hotel, Horacio meets us and after a lengthy and detailed debrief (three-hour discussion with translation), we call it a night. I head back to my room and take a couple of moments to enjoy a long last look at the BC, poring over its details in the half light. As I’m doing so, Horacio walks up to it, pats it on the flank, leans over and kisses it goodnight.

For some people, cars are more than engineering projects. They have soul. In this case, a little of a friend and mentor. And for as long as there are people like Horacio Pagani in this world, the religion of the hypercar is in good hands.