The Couturier of Cars

Horacio Pagani on the world of automotive haute couture and what makes a beautiful automobile.

- JAMIE NONIS

All men dream — but not equally. And it is the man who will let nothing stand between him and unreasonable ambition who ultimately achieves the extraordinary.

This is the story of one Horacio Pagani that began, quite modestly, in Argentina about a half-century ago.

The son of an artist and a baker, young Horacio spent much of his boyhood days sketching and carving futuristic looking car models from balsa wood, dreaming endlessly of one day building the most beautiful car in the world.

His insatiably inquisitive nature paired with the unyielding tenacity of a budding polymath soon saw Pagani build his own motorbike at 14, assemble a four-wheeled buggie before finishing high school, and construct his own Formula 2 single-seater race car by his early 20s.

But it was his stubbornness that eventually led to the founding of Pagani Automobili.

Dissatisfied with the school curriculum and frustrated at the prospect that tertiary education would steal five of the most creative years of his life, Pagani dropped out of university, where he had studied industrial design and later mechanical engineering. Earlier, Pagani had discovered the works of Leonardo da Vinci and became enamoured with his philosophies which demonstrated equal reverence for both art and science.

Upon leaving school, where he could not find a course, programme, or faculty that taught both art and science, Pagani opened an 80sqm “factory” and received his first commissioned job to construct a set of bar stools.

He soon established Horacio Pagani Design, which quickly found success producing commercial camper vans and caravans.

A SECRET REJECTION