A visit to Pagani Automobili - Page 2/4

Engineering Elements As a corporation, Pagani Automobili is very vertically integrated. All design, engineering, development and assembly is carried out directly by Pagani in their Modena headquarters, with the exception of the engine and gearbox assemblies which are supplied by third party companies. As a result, the tireless attention to detail and engineering excellence is constantly monitored and assured. In the design and engineering department alone, Pagani employs four full time designers and four full time engineers out of a total work force of 35 people. With design and engineering comprising twenty three percent of the entire workforce, it is easy to understand how the cars are in continuous development and improvement.

Recruiting talented engineering and design staff is not difficult for Pagani Automobili – because of their reputation, talented designers are constantly soliciting Pagani for work. Effectively, the company can always be assured of a constant stream of high-caliber talent to choose from to continue the Zonda legacy.

Design The basic design of the Zonda supercar stems from a few basic design elements:

In terms of appearance, the car is designed to capture elements of a Group C LeMans car. The cockpit is centrally located within the chassis of the car, immediately in front of the engine to assist with weight distribution. The nose of the car abruptly drops away at the front to show a deep air dam finished by the carbon fiber lower splitter. The rear of the car sits on wide haunches with a low rear wing element perched at the rear, punctuated by the now-famous central exhaust with four outlets. A large mesh grille allows the heat from the mufflers to vent rearward, and a rear diffuser provides an air path from the underside of the car with an exit. Visually, the car looks as if it would be as comfortable on the race track as it is on the road. The original car was subjected to wind tunnel testing both as a scale model as well as a full size car. Since that time, extensive computer simulations have been carried out on subsequent models to verify any changes to the aerodynamic surfaces of the car.

From a technical stance, the car is built around a very light but highly rigid chassis structure. This structure is designed to allow easy adjustment to the suspension to tailor the cars attitude on road as well as to customer specific ride requirements. Pagani places safety at the highest levels of importance, and thus the car’s structure is designed with this in mind – the carbon fiber passenger safety cell has three more layers of material than recommended to provide an added element of safety in the event of a crash. These three elements combine to produce one of the lightest, stiffest and safest chassis on the road today. The Zonda meets all of the stringent crash test requirements for all the countries in Europe.

Testing The company also maintains a dedicated “test mule” platform to allow testing of all new technologies before they are incorporated into production cars. Essentially unchanged, with the exception of minor improvements to the engine and gearbox as new versions of software have been introduced, the car has logged an incredible amount of time since being built. Perhaps the greatest testament to the durability of the Zonda design, the test car has covered more than 250,000 kilometers (about 155,000 miles) with no major repairs and not a single crack to any of the composite structures. Numerous sensors are fitted the vehicle’s systems which perpetually log performance for continuous product improvement efforts.

Production Pagani Automobili currently produces between fifteen and twenty cars per year. Considering it takes approximately nine months from order specification to delivery of a customer car, this is a very impressive production level, and is testimony to the efficiency of the Pagani manufacturing organization. Every piece of carbon fiber componentry is laid into molds, baked in autoclaves, fitted and assembled solely on the Pagani manufacturing floor.

As testimony to Pagani’s attention to detail, the entire car is “fit checked” with all components, including the engine and drivetrain, before the individual carbon pieces are sent out for painting. The only elements of manufacturing not completed at the Pagani facility (other than the engine and drivetrain) amount to the rear engine mounting structure and the chromium-molybdenum steel subframe at the front of the car, which are both produced locally to Pagani’s exacting specifications.

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