A day with Pagani's 791-hp rolling sculpture, the Huayra Roadster BC, has us considering art theft.
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Tested: Pagani Huayra Roadster BC Exists on a Higher Plane
A day with Pagani's 791-hp rolling sculpture, the Huayra Roadster BC, has us considering art theft.
BY TONY QUIROGA PUBLISHED: OCT 22, 2021
Imagine if the Louvre handed over the
Mona Lisa for a day. Your own private masterpiece. Take it home, hold it up to your nose for a close look, hang it on your wall. Want to run your fingers over the brushstrokes? Go ahead, no one is looking.
For an auto enthusiast, seeing a $4.0 million Pagani Huayra Roadster BC in the wild is akin to laying eyes on the Mona Lisa. Getting handed the Huayra-shaped key and testing one is like tucking La Gioconda under your arm and making for the exit.
A 3051-pound tribute to the carbon-fiber medium, the Roadster is as much a sculpture as it is a car. It's the latest in the Huayra Roadster line, which dates to 2017. Only 40 of the targa-top-style BCs will ever exist, so the company is able to labor over each one for a while. Meticulously aligned carbon-fiber panels, titanium fasteners engraved with "Pagani," leather straps that lock the front and rear clamshells in place—the creator's marks are all over the thing. There's artistry in the build quality. Finding imperfection becomes a game. Hey, the carbon weave where the glovebox meets the dashboard is a little off. Oh, wait. It's not fully closed. Click. Perfect.
We met the BC at a desert proving ground, where it emptied nearby buildings like a bomb threat. Without a velvet rope to protect it, engineers and car lovers mobbed it. Hypercars might be art, but they're also carnival barkers shouting at everyone in sight to step on up: "Don't be shy! Come gaze at the otherworldly shape of the $4 million car from Italy."
It's hard not to be taken in by the Huayra's alien-insect aesthetic, the beady little arachnid-eye headlights, the skinny fender-mounted mirrors probing upward like antennae, the chitin-esque gloss of the clear-coated exposed-carbon exoskeleton, the movable flaps in the front, and that tail with its wing and four big exhaust tips.
A steel-subframe latticework bolts to the back of the carbon-fiber passenger tub and supports the control-arm rear suspension, the Mercedes-AMG-sourced 791-hp twin-turbo 6.0-liter V-12, and the seven-speed automated manual. In normal use, the engine is quieter than expected, but if you're leaning into the accelerator, there is an explosion of sound around 4000 rpm. At wide-open throttle, a merciless 95 decibels will ring your ears. Should you want loudness throughout the rev range, push the exhaust button by the shifter and a speaker behind the driver will amplify the noise to tinnitus-causing levels."
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"DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 110.0 in
Length: 187.7 in
Width: 80.7 in
Height: 46.5 in
Passenger Volume (
C/D est): 50 ft3
Cargo Volume: 3 ft3
Curb Weight: 3051 lb
C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 3.3 sec
100 mph: 5.7 sec
130 mph: 8.2 sec
1/4-Mile: 10.4 sec @ 148 mph
160 mph: 12.1 sec
180 mph: 16.5 sec
Results above omit 1-ft rollout of 0.3 sec.
Rolling Start, 5–60 mph: 3.5 sec
Top Gear, 30–50 mph: 2.5 sec
Top Gear, 50–70 mph: 2.5 sec
Top Speed (
C/D est): 230 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 139 ft
Braking, 100–0 mph: 271 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 1.15 g
EPA FUEL ECONOMY
Combined/City/Highway: 12/10/15 mpg"
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