DRIVING TO UTOPIA

Last November, the Japanese company Toyota revealed that in the 88 years since its founding, it's produced 300 million cars.

To put all that steel, rubber, and other materials in perspective, compare those numbers with the total output of Ferrari, which in 2023 celebrated 76 years in business: making a relatively informed guess, I'd say that since its inception the Italian sportscar company has built around 250,000 vehicles, which is probably only a little more than Toyota currently churns out in 10 days from its 30-odd plants around the world.

But what about the tiny hypercar maker Pagani, the price of whose spectacular, bespoke, and ultra-exclusive automobiles probably eclipses those of most (though not all) Ferraris by at least 10 times? I'd be surprised if it's created more than 500 machines in its entire history, or that the rate of production ever gets more frantic than the single car that rolls out each week from its small factory on the outskirts of Modena.

To say that the car company founded by the Argentine-Italian designer Horacio Pagani does things differently from everyone else is understatement in the extreme. It's a family business, literally and metaphorically: Pagani's two sons, Christopher and Leonardo (the latter named for Da Vinci, of which more later) both work at the company, the interior of whose headquarters more resembles an Italian village piazza than a typical automobile production line-and as fewer than 200 people work there, the boss probably knows most of them by name.

And then there's the stunning level of craftsmanship visible everywhere on each car, from the racing-style aerospace-alloy double-wishbone suspension, the polished manual gearshift mechanism, and the fabulous cabin of gleaming leather and furniture fashioned from aluminium blocks, to the old-school straps used to retain the carbon-fibre clamshell body panels.