… There are cars that are dreamt into being. The latest creation from San Cesario sul Panaro belongs firmly to the second category. At this year’s Concours at Wynn Las Vegas, Pagani Automobili has present the Huayra 70 Anima, the third and final chapter of a trilogy that will be shown in its entirety for the very first time.
It marks the Italian marque’s second consecutive appearance at the Nevada concours, and Pagani is hardly arriving empty-handed. Alongside the three Huayra 70s, some forty further rare and unique cars from the Modenese atelier will gather on the lawns of the Wynn: a congregation of carbon fibre and craftsmanship that few collections on earth could hope to rival. All three Huayra 70s were born within Grandi Complicazioni, the in-house division Pagani reserves for its most ambitious one-off and few-off commissions. The name is a knowing nod to haute horlogerie, where a “grand complication” denotes a watch of extraordinary mechanical intricacy, and the parallel is apt. This is a programme in which client and factory work side by side to turn a deeply personal vision into something tangible.
In Anima’s case, that process ran to more than a year. Designer Lorenzo Kerkoc describes a journey built on listening, research, dialogue and interpretation, an effort to understand the owner’s personality and memories rather than simply his specification sheet. At its heart lay a wish the client had carried since boyhood: to one day create a special car alongside Horacio Pagani himself. Hence the name. Anima, Italian for “soul”, is, as Kerkoc puts it, a way of giving shape to something born in the deepest imagination of a child.
That dream has now been rendered as a study in blue. The bodywork wears a dual-tone clear finish pairing a bespoke Metallic Light Blue with a deep Inky Blue, both laced with diamond dust to lend the surfaces an almost liquid luminosity. Along the body runs a primary stripe of hand-applied platinum leaf, worked by hand into a delicate floral pattern, accompanied by a secondary stripe alternating between the two blues, a motif echoed on the door mirrors. The detailing is relentless. Solid-milled aluminium components carry a silver anodised finish, while diamond-cut wheels in Inky Blue are edged in a perimeter of Las Vegas Blue. Chrome brake callipers peer out from behind the spokes, and the six-pipe exhaust is finished in white ceramic. Lift the clamshells and the theme continues: components beneath are anodised in Tricolore Blue, with the chassis tie-rods and suspension springs picked out in Argentina Light Blue, a quiet tribute to the founder’s homeland.
Inside, beige and milk-white leather sit alongside an exclusive Loro Piana fabric. The exposed carbon fibre is tinted predominantly Inky Blue, while the steering wheel and the knob of the manual gearbox, the most tactile of touchpoints, are finished in the light blue metallic with its diamond-dust sparkle. Graphic flourishes drawn from the flags of Argentina and Las Vegas complete the conversation between owner, maker and place. For Horacio Pagani, bringing Anima and its two siblings to Las Vegas, he says, is a celebration of the tireless search for harmony between form and function, intellect and craft, shared with those who feel the same passion for automotive design.
With Anima, the Huayra 70 trilogy is complete, and Las Vegas will be the first to see all three cars side by side. It is a fitting showcase for “Grandi Complicazioni”, and a clear confirmation of how far Pagani is prepared to go when a client asks for something simply amazing.
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Article edited by Massimo Basile
Editor & Founder