Horacio Pagani Manages His Car Company Just Like His Father Managed His Bakery

Pull up to Pagani Automobili headquarters near Modena and you’ll feel stuck between two worlds. Century-old wheat farms surround a modern building whose metal and glass facade breaks with the ancient landscape. A narrow two-lane road serves as a border between the two extremes. On one side, farmers work the land to produce the core ingredients of Italian food. On the other, artisans work with carbon and titanium to generate the core ingredients of an Italian hypercar.

This building is where the magic happens—from manufacturing to assembling, the Atelier, and the small but breathtaking Horacio Pagani museum. Things haven’t always been this fancy or even this spacious, however. Back in 2005, at the ripe age of 18, a friend of a friend of a friend managed to get me into the original Pagani HQ, not too far from where the current one sits. It was compact. There was space for just two cars in the lobby and just one or maybe two in a glass enclosure where they assembled customer cars. Next to the lobby was a hermetically sealed room where workers laid out carbon fiber, and behind it a shop with a massive kiln for baking it. It was a low-key operation—you’d never guess that behind those walls was a small group of geniuses building cars more radical and exquisite than their neighbors in Maranello and Sant’Agata.

Things have changed quite a bit for Pagani since 2005, but they’ve also kind of remained the same. Horacio, his family, and his team have retained a sense of warmth and openness that other traditional automakers lack—let alone ones that build $4 million cars.

During a conversation with Horacio at the unveiling of the Utopia Roadster in Monterey last month, we discussed his and his company’s journey through the 1990s as the Zonda came to life, the many variations of it through the aughts, and the trajectory-changing Huayra the decade after. Of course, we also discussed the current flagship: the Utopia. We chatted about his foundational beliefs—not as a designer, but as a leader and businessperson—and briefly engrossed in the future. It wasn’t exactly a formal interview, either; this was a chat in our native languages (Spanish) about life, enjoyed over a cup of espresso.

“What’s changed over the years is that when I started the adventure of the Zonda in 1990, it was truly that—an adventure,” Pagani told me. “I didn’t have anything to lose. If I lost it all back then I didn’t hurt anyone—it wasn’t a big problem—maybe just the very few people who worked with me at the time.

“As customers began to come back to buy another Zonda and eventually a Huayra, we realized that the responsibility was enormous,” he added. “It’s one thing to have 15 employees working with you than to have 250 people and their families, and 100 suppliers relying on you and trusting you. Sometimes I don’t sleep well at night.”

Growing up, I witnessed my own father start and grow our family’s business; the highs, the lows, the never-ending days, and the monumental worry—so I understand Horacio’s sense of duty toward his people. After all, he studied design and engineering, but building a car requires skills different from running an entire company. One of the biggest mistakes young professionals make is believing they can be their own boss and run a business right out of school. Unfortunately, just because you’re a phenomenal chef doesn’t mean you’ll be a phenomenal entrepreneur.

Horacio may have been a prominent talent when he started Modena Design in the early ’90s (the precursor to Pagani Automobili), having worked at Renault where he befriended Formula 1 legend and fellow Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio, and then at the Lamborghini factory, where he even performed janitorial work before developing the LM002, the Countach Evoluzione concept, and golf bag caddies, of all things. No, seriously. But was he prepared to run a car company?

“Running the company has everything to do with what my father told me when I was a kid. My father was a baker and used to tell me that a ‘customer wasn’t someone who came to buy bread once, a customer was someone who came back to buy bread over and over again.’ This was ingrained in me from a young age and I would always tell this story to my family, my sons, and my colleagues,” he said.

“We have to build cars in a manner that when a client buys a car, they are so happy that they buy another—and also that these are good investments. In order to make that happen, we have to offer great quality and great service.”

The Zonda would eventually launch Pagani’s dream into the stratosphere around 1998. The operation grew exponentially year after year, and by the time the Huayra arrived in 2011, it was clear that through Horacio’s masterful combination of science and art, Pagani Automobili had an extremely exclusive clientele. But that came with pros and cons.

“We’ve grown massively in terms of technology [since the Zonda] and most of our employees have been with us for many years,” said Pagani. “Still, the median age is just 32 years—we are a young, flexible company.

“We saw that, in many cases, our clients were some of the richest and most influential people on the planet. We thought, ‘What great satisfaction,’ but also ‘What great responsibility.’ Our satisfaction grew proportionally as the responsibility increased, and this sense of responsibility led me to worry about potential problems and risks much more than when the company was small,” he added.

Like all automakers big and small, Pagani is at a crossroads. Yes, it caters to the wealthiest people in the world. Yes, it only produces between 50 and 60 cars per year, and yes it might be exempt from some of the regulations larger automakers will have to abide by in the future. But there’s no hiding that things are changing and it’s hard to predict what’s around the corner. The Zonda and Huayra were great successes and now the Utopia is sold out for years, but unstable economic, political, and social climates around the world make it especially difficult to run a boutique automotive company.

“It’s difficult. It’s especially difficult when the directives aren’t very clear, and that’s the problem with Europe lately,” Pagani said. “There’s a lot of confusion. Europe says that in 2035 no more ICE cars. To me, everything has to be gradual, not everything can change from one moment to another—we don’t have the infrastructure. I think that the regulations concerning electrification may change because otherwise, China is going to devour Europe and the United States—and it will devour them in one bite.”

As our chat wrapped up, I could see both of Horacio’s sons, Christopher and Leonardo, running around in the background. It was evident that the Argentinian was in high demand for the next few days, as dozens of clients poured into the peninsula to see him. Despite his popularity, Pagani is always keen to meet with patrons and enthusiasts.

This made me reflect on the fact that despite having visited Pagani’s HQ twice, I had never done so in a professional capacity—always as a tourist. This summer’s visit was with my teenage son, who certainly enjoyed the museum but loved the Utopia prototype driving around the factory even more. When I was his age, however, during my visit to their original building, I randomly found myself kicking a soccer ball with another kid outside the shop. Later, the guy who had arranged the visit asked me if I knew who that was, but I didn’t. He told me that boy was one of Horacio’s sons. I never learned which of the two it was, but I didn’t give it a second thought—it’s not like I’d ever be around him again.

Twenty summers later, we are, in fact, around each other again, albeit on opposite sides of Car Week. He’s now standing by his father’s side supporting the family business (and no longer wearing a wrinkly Nirvana t-shirt). Both brothers are dressed sharply, preparing to carry on their family’s legacy. As for me, I’m interviewing their father and boss—who by now has become an icon.

A lot has happened in our respective worlds since 2005, yet somehow we’re still here, playing with cars. Y’know, life works in mysterious ways.

Email the author at jerry@thedrive.com