Behind the Wheel of the 2010 Pagani Zonda R

Only in Italy can you turn up at an airport, ask if they have many flights landing, and, if not, whether they would let you run a 217-mph track car. Mind you, it does help if the airport in question is in Modena and the man asking is Andrea Montermini, Ferrari test driver and former Formula 1 racer.

Which is how we end up sitting at the end of a runway in the 739-horsepower Pagani Zonda R and pondering two questions.

First, when Horacio Pagani braved the supercar world with his Pagani Zonda C12 back in 1999, did he ever imagine he would have no trouble selling a version costing nearly $2.3 million? And more important, exactly where does the 2010 Pagani Zonda R sit in the league of seriously brisk motor cars?

Zonda and Lightning
For the sake of the clutch, we're asked not to perform a standing start, so instead we roll away from a standstill and then squeeze full throttle within a second. The response is instant and frankly shocking. For an engine tuned to provide 739 horsepower at 7,500 rpm, the throttle pickup from low revs is faultless. From there, the power from the Mercedes-Benz V12 simply unfolds with breathtaking linearity.

And somewhere through the midrange, the tires give up. That's right, the overheated 335/30R20 Pirelli P Zero rear slicks are breaking traction on a bone-dry surface. The V12 is deafening and the factory's claim of reaching 100 km/h (62 mph) in 2.7 seconds certainly feels entirely believable.

A Surprising Success
The Pagani Zonda has been a remarkable success story. When the Pagani Zonda C12 was introduced in 1999, it carried a 395-hp Mercedes V12 and a price tag of $309,000 — already ambitious for a small company known only in the carbon-fiber industry as Pagani Composite Research.

But the Zonda quickly found its fans and the car began to evolve. First the Zonda S 7.0 was introduced with its 7.0-liter version of the Mercedes V12, then the Zonda S 7.3 lifted the output to 547 hp. In 2003 Pagani announced the first roadster version of the Zonda. Two years later came the thoroughly reengineered Zonda F with its 641-hp V12, carbon-ceramic brakes, upgraded tires and revised aerodynamics.

And yet within his office at Pagani Automobili S.p.A. in San Cesaro sul Panero, a tiny suburb of Modena, Italy, Horacio Pagani felt the Zonda had more to give.

Making a Statement at the Nürburgring
Which brings us to this sunny August morning and the pinnacle of the Pagani Zonda story. The Zonda R first surfaced in 2007, but only in July this year did Horacio casually announce that the car had popped over to the Nürburgring Nordschleife and clocked a lap time of 6:47. While the Pagani Zonda R is not street legal, Horacio Pagani claims it is based on a production car and thus eligible for setting the very unofficial record for production cars around the Nordschleife.

Without getting drawn into Nordschleife records and definitions, the fact is this: However you cut it, 6 minutes and 47 seconds is flipping fast, some 11 seconds quicker than the time set by the equally illegal-for-the-public-thoroughfares Ferrari 599XX.

Inspecting the Hardware
There is one obvious difference between the Pagani Zonda R and current road-going Zondas in that the racing version has an engine that displaces a mere 5,987cc, because this dry-sump V12 has been built to the same specifications as the engine of the Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR GT1 car that raced at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Since the Pagani Zonda R weighs just 2,359 pounds, the combination is pretty potent.

At idle the V12 is already monumentally loud; near redline, it is of the bleeding ear level.

Beyond 6,000 rpm, the V12 sounds sensational, pulling relentlessly with a soundtrack straight from Le Mans. Even without removing the R bodywork's huge rear clamshell — like the rest of the body and central tub, it's constructed from carbon titanium, a fabric even stronger than regular carbon fiber — the exhaust plumbing is visible. And there is not a single muffler in sight. At idle the V12 is already monumentally loud; closing in on the redline, it is of the bleeding ear level.

The Zonda R features a single-clutch six-speed automated manual transmission built by XTRAC, which means that pulling away from a stop is not the nerve-wracking juggling act of razor-sharp throttle and hair-trigger carbon clutch that we'd imagined. It is, in fact, as simple as pulling on the right paddle to engage 1st gear, then tickling the throttle. It also means gearshifts are brutally fast. Just 20 milliseconds elapses between gears, or a third of the time a shift takes in a Ferrari 430 Scuderia.

Cleared for Takeoff
The Modena runway is just a half mile long. Allowing room to brake and turn, that's just about a third of a mile of full throttle, although that's enough for the Pagani Zonda R to exceed 150 mph. It's enough to challenge a Bugatti Veyron from 30-180 mph. The only thing we've driven that comes close for sheer lack of inertia is a McLaren F1 GTR, and even then the Zonda might just have the edge.

What impresses most, though, is that the R works so well as a package. So often when you have such a stellar engine, the rest of the car struggles to match up. With the Zonda R, this is simply not the case.

While today doesn't provide a chance to test Pagani's claims of 2.0g of lateral grip, there are enough corners here at the Modena airport to reveal that the R is incredibly well balanced. There is, of course, a huge amount of cornering grip; the surprise is that the limit is approachable and exploitable. And while the 15-inch carbon-ceramic brakes have brutal stopping power, they don't require the pedal precision of an F1 hopeful. There's even a 12-stage ABS system.

The key with the Pagani Zonda R is that although it is not designed to go racing, you could rock up at a race meeting and not be embarrassed. And yet, unlike so many competition cars, you don't have to drive it at ten-tenths to enjoy it. For all the performance, grip, noise and expensive materials, when you actually drive the Zonda R, it is surprisingly approachable. The car demands respect, but it doesn't intimidate.

Living Space
Is this car worth $2.3 million? Can any car be worth that much? To an extent it is beside the point, because to run the Zonda R you'd need pockets deep enough to afford a support team, and even then the car is so unbelievably loud that it's probably best that you own the race circuit and perhaps the surrounding 50 square miles as well.

What is clear, though, is that anyone buying the Pagani Zonda R will be getting not only a splendid track car but also a spectacular piece of engineering. Even at rest, when the only sound is the magical clicking of the cooling engine and brakes, it is impossible not to get lost in the details. For example, the way the weave of the carbon titanium is meticulously matched down the center line of the bodywork is really something.

You can almost get as much enjoyment from looking at the Zonda R as driving it. The cabin is recognizable as being derived from the road-going Zonda with the same overstated air vents and extrovert pedals, but the overall feel is considerably more businesslike. There is a full rollover cage, a digital dash and a steering wheel festooned with controls. What is unusual, though, is that for a limited-run track-only special, the overall finish is exquisite.

Hurry, Inventory Is Limited!
Just as a bonus, we're able to drive the streets of Modena in a Zonda roadster technically known as the Pagani Zonda Cinque. Apparently Pagani's distributor in Hong Kong asked the factory to make a street-legal version of the Zonda R and a short run of five cars (hence "Cinque," the number five in Italian). Each is priced at $1.9 million.

Although the 669-hp Cinque is the most powerful street-legal version of the Zonda, it's a bit of a stretch to call it a street-legal Zonda R. While the chassis and bodywork are made from carbon titanium, it does not feature the R's extended wheelbase. Furthermore, the Cinque is powered by the 7.3-liter V12 rather than the race-derived 6.0-liter and it features a different transmission, too.

All of which is probably for the best, because good though the R is, it would be undrivable on the road. The Cinque, though, copes very well — managing to be almost as quick, but with enough compliance to deal with the bumpy roads around Modena. And since it's a roadster, you get to hear more of the outrageous exhaust.

Horacio Pagani says he will make only 16 examples of the 2010 Pagani Zonda R. And by the time the 2011 Geneva Auto Show rolls around, there will be a further evolution of the car. Given Horacio Pagani's ambition and his fanatical attention to detail, it will be interesting to see what he thinks up next.

After all, he has already transformed a car that no one had ever heard of into one of the fastest and most expensive in the world.

Portions of this content have appeared in foreign print media and are reproduced with permission.