There’s nothing out there that really rises to the level of a Pagani. Not in terms of craftsmanship, design, soul, and most certainly, price. And while performance is obviously paramount for the boutique Italian automaker, it’s not the one variable that rules above all else—that would be the purity of the machinery and emotions that it transmits. That’s a funny thing to say considering the Pagani Utopia Roadster I recently drove is powered by a 6.0-liter, twin-turbo V12 that makes 864 horsepower and 811 lb-ft of torque, goes like absolute hell, and sounds like God himself.
My experience behind the wheel of this handmade, $4,000,000 hypercar will go live in the coming weeks, but before I could drive the thing, I had to spend some time as a passenger to make sure I acclimated to the car, the narrow Italian country roads, and the overall environment. This meant hanging out with Matteo, one of Pagani’s development drivers.
Matteo has been with the company for over a decade, and if I thought I had a cool job, he has me beat by a pretty good margin. Not only is he a lovely ragazzo, but he gets to drive all kinds of Paganis on a regular basis, perform various developmental tests, participate in Pagani-hosted events, and, from time to time, babysit a lowly journalist like myself. That’s gotta be the worst part of the job, for sure.
Once upon a time, Matteo sharpened his skills under the tutelage of another famous development driver who worked for another hypercar company (a French one). Either way, I was surprised when he told me that he never was a professional racing driver, but once I got to thinking about it, that makes a lot of sense. Despite these being hardcore cars, not everything has to be driven like a race car when gathering data, putting a component through its paces, or shaking down a test mule.
As you can see in this video here, it doesn’t matter if he was a racing driver or not, because the man can drive. As I know first-hand now, the Utopia Roadster is not an easy machine to tame, especially with its dog-leg, seven-speed manual transmission. There’s a ton of torque to manage and get right as you shift through the gears, and once the turbos spool up (which you can hear quite loudly), the low-and-wide machine just rockets forward like a bat out of hell. Seeing Matteo handle all of this with finesse and skill is quite otherworldly. I’m pretty sure that at some point, we actually caught air as we crested over a bridge… while turning.
It was a combination of the Utopia Roadster’s gargantuan performance and Matteo’s skills that, once I got out of the car, I quickly told Pagani’s public relations person: “I’ve been ruined for life. This is it.” And I meant it—it’s such a special machine, and to have experienced it with Matteo on the very roads where so many of Italy’s finest cars are developed was something truly magical. I’m just grateful for having experienced it, and I felt all of this before getting to drive it myself.
My conversation with Matteo was just as exciting as the drive itself, as we talked about our love for Fiat Pandas and his daily driver, a regular Volkswagen Golf. He also shared some neat anecdotes of some memorable drives he’s done in Paganis through the Alps and on dozens of racetracks throughout Europe.
There’s a lot more Pagani content in the pipeline for the coming weeks, so stay tuned. For now, enjoy listening to the outrageous sound of the Pagani Utopia Roadster.
Ciao ciao.
Email the author at jerry@thedrive.com
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