Pagani Will Keep Using V12 Engines Until 2026, EV Already in the Works

Horacio Pagani offers a sneak peek at the future of the hypercar builder, including a possible $3.3-million SUV.

byChris Tsui|
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The Pagani Huayra has been in production for seven years now, and for those worrying that the arrival of its successor will mark the end of V12 hypercars from Pagani, its founder recently claimed that the brand's iconic turbo 12-cylinder engine will soldier on until 2026.

Speaking to Autocar, head honcho Horacio Pagani said that work is underway on the company's Huayra sequel and that it'll definitely get another twin-turbo V12 from Mercedes-AMG, which will be used well into the next decade.

"This next model will have a similar philosophy [with the Huayra]," said Pagani. "It will have a traditional combustion engine, a new-generation Mercedes-AMG V12 twin-turbo. We have a very close relationship with Mercedes already and this new V12 engine will be homologated until 2026." The car is internally known as the C10 and is scheduled to debut in 2022. 

However, the boutique Italian automaker also sees the writing on the wall in regards to electrification and admits it's already working on an all-electric hypercar that'll sit on a modified C10 platform. "The C10 will have a regular V12 but, at the same time, there will be a full-electric vehicle," Horacio said. "It is not going to be exactly the same platform. It will be modified." 

On top of environmental reasons, Pagani said the shift to electric was spurred on by changing customer demographics. "At the beginning, our clients tended to be car collectors in Europe in their 50s or above. Now the average age has dropped significantly and we have a lot of younger buyers in Asia Pacific and also in North America and Silicon Valley," the Pagani boss said.

What's more, Horacio Pagani went on to say that his company has already considered doing an SUV. If Pagani does build its own off-roader, Horacio says it'd probably be Mercedes-based, but don't expect it to compete with stuff like the Porsche Cayenne and Lamborghini Urus. At least not on price. 

"If I had to come up with a Pagani SUV, it would need to have a price tag of €3 million ($3.3 million) or above to be in line with our current strategy," revealed Pagani. "We would access the technology of Mercedes-Benz because they produce SUVs, and because of the close relationship we enjoy, we could maybe use the big SUV platform," presumably referring to the unibody platform shared by the Mercedes GLE and GLS. "It's something that has been in the back of my mind, but the journey from concept to reality for anything like that is a long one."

Considering what booming sales of the Urus have done for Lamborghini financially, we can't blame Pagani for thinking about going down a similar route. 

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