This, ladies and gentlemen, is the new Pagani Huayra Roadster. And, somewhat unusually, it’s actually lighter than the coupé on which it is based … and makes even more power.
Is that the sound of you dialling your bank manager? Too late. All 100 have already been sold. Besides, you’d need to have coughed up a pre-VAT base price of some €2 280 000 (that’s around R31,5-million).
Pagani says the roadster project began back in 2010, with the “ostensibly simple” idea of a Huayra Coupe with a removable roof and conventional doors. But three years later, the design was scrapped and the design process started all over again.
One of the ambitious goals set at the very beginning was to build a roadster that would be lighter than the coupé, improving the torsional rigidity of the frame.
Pagani says it managed a 52% increase in stiffness, at the same weight, thanks to the liberal use of carbo-titanium and carbo-triax HP52. The dry weight of the Huayra Roadster is 1 280 kg, or about 80 kg less than the Huayra Coupé.
Power come from a Mercedes-AMG M158 engine. In this guise, the twin-turbo 6,0-litre V12 makes a whopping 562 kW at 6 200 r/min, with peak torque of “over 1 000 N.m” available at 2 400 r/min. This considerable oomph is managed by a seven-speed transmission developed for the Huayra BC and built by X-Track.
The Pagani Huayra Roadster will be fitted with two types of roof. The first is a light carbon hard-top with a central glass element. In this configuration, Pagani says it “assumes the look of a coupe, with a glass roof that provides the passenger a unique brightness”.
The second type of roof is a fabric and carbon cover that can be “easily installed manually and can be stored inside”.
The Huayra Roadster will make its official debut at the Geneva Motor Show next month.
