Motor Mouth: How mirrors make Pagani’s newest track special a Huayra

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Horacio Pagani loves him some mirrors. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to this video — 4:27 long, no less — extolling the beauty of the lowly side mirror. He was, by way of explaining the origins of his provocatively-shaped looking glass, inspired “by the eyes of a beautiful woman.” And, while he doesn’t specify exactly which beautiful woman moved him so, his tribute, like so many things on his hand-built monsters, is crafted from hand-laid carbon fibre.

Like most things engineered by Pagani, his mirrors, too, serve a dual purpose, their unique shape yet another small part of the elaborate aerodynamic design that sees his cars generate as much as 1,000 kilograms of downforce without the attendant increase in drag. And, like everything Pagani produces, the final product is massively over-engineered, its CNC-milled aluminum fitting actually based on a part from Formula One suspension systems. Yes, it’s just a mirror.

It is also the single, solitary part that survived the transition from road-going Huayra to track-only Huayra R.

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It was not supposed to be thus. At least not according to Francesco Perini. The original plan, says Pagani’s head of technical office, was to use as many of the street-going Huayra’s parts as possible. It’s just that the deeper they got into the project — and the more Horacio’s unending quest for perfection challenged even the world’s greatest (road-going) supercar — the more the Huayra’s parts got modified beyond recognition.

Take the all-important carbon-fibre tub, for instance. Perini says the engineering team really did intend to use the original chassis. But as Pagani Senior kept upping the ante for torsional rigidity — the R ended up with just over 50 per cent more resistance to twisting than the base item’s granite-like rigidity — less and less of the base Huayra survived the transition. By the time they were finished, the R’s door sills were almost one-third of a metre higher, and the number of parts used to make up the tub cut by almost half: The fewer joints to be bonded, the more rigid the car’s backbone. That required a different suspension superstructure which, in turn, required different suspension components. By the time all the machinations were complete, the engineering team had designed all the basic chassis ingredients — especially all the suspension hardware — that will make up the third-generation Pagani supercar, codenamed C10, due to be unveiled on September 12.

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Though its path to final specification is not nearly as convoluted, the R’s engine is no less unique. Although both the Huayra and the R are ostensibly powered by 6.0-litre V12s with a Mercedes-Benz affiliation, they could not be more different. In fact, they too share not a single solitary part. That’s because, while the Huayra’s V12 is a low-revving twice-turbocharged torque monster built by Mercedes-AMG, the R’s, as described in my track test, is built by a small racing firm called HWA. And although there’s little doubt that some of the expertise that went into the Huayra’s M158 motor ended up in the R’s purpose-built track engine — HWA founder Hans-Werner Aufrecht is also the “A” in AMG — they are as different as night and day, the new V12 eschewing forced induction, relying instead on the miracle of high rpm to produce power.

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So, while the Huayra BC’s twin-turbo V12 produces its maximum 753 horsepower at a measly 5,500 rpm, the naturally-aspirated R spins to a shrieking 8,300 revs in rendering its 838 hp. Perhaps just as important is that, while the road-going V12 weighs 261 kilograms, the R’s track-only unit tips the balances at just 198 kilos. That’s a massive 140 pounds lost, an incredible weight savings when you consider the time and money race teams spend trying to save just a couple of pounds.

Moving further backwards, I thought perhaps the transmission might have been carried over. But no, the six-speed, three-disc, non-synchro sequential gearbox is completely unique to the R. Ditto the 12-into-four Inconel 625/718 exhaust system — sans mufflers, if you read our preview — not to mention the Brembo CCM-R “self-ventilating” carbon-ceramic brakes, APP Tech forged aluminum wheels, and, of course, the Pirelli slick tires.

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Nor, as even a quick glimpse of the bodywork makes clear, are any body parts interchangeable between Huayra and Huayra R. And, of course, the latter being a race car and the former a work of art masquerading as a (road-legal) supercar, none of Pagani’s trademark interior hedonism makes the grade either. As I said, if you were to look through the entire Pagani parts fiche, you would find that the Huayra and the Huayra R share no parts in common — except the aforementioned mirrors.

Of course, the obvious question is: Why the mirrors? If you’ve redesigned virtually every other piece of your latest supercar, why go with carryover versions of what, at least to most of us, would seem the most trivial part of a supercar, made all the more inconsequential, one presumes, since the Huayra R will never, ever see the traffic of a public road?

According to Perini, the answer is simple: “We had to call it a Huayra.” Now, to most of us, I suspect, the implication that the retention of a couple of reflectors justifies the continuation of an entire model line would seem, on the face of it, laughable. On the other hand, I guess if the one part carried over was lovingly fashioned by one of the most creative minds in supercar design, then, “like a beautiful woman’s eyes,” it’s more than enough justification for an orderly nameplate transition.