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Work is well under way on Pagani’s replacement for its incredible Zonda supercar.
This development mule for a new model, codenamed ‘C9’ by the Modena company, was snapped by our spies in Italy.
Although the prototype’s looks are similar to the current Zonda C12’s, underneath the skin its mechanical components are thought to be new.
The C9 is expected to use an AMG V8 - possibly a version of the Mercedes-McLaren SLR’s 5.4-litre unit – instead of the current Zonda’s Mercedes V12. Paga...Read the full article

Pagani are clearly capable of making a dynamically wonderful car, but visually, their products are garish and adorned with detail features that upset the impact of a basically good-looking, cab-forward body. Regarding the current car: around the front, the relation of the tiny beak to the entirety of the nose, the vulgarity of the lights, and the infantile interior aped from Flash Gordon all upset any sense of design purity, fine-judgement and exotic prestige. At the rear, the real horror has taken place. The fractured incongruity to the pattern of lights, exhaust and inherently ugly slope of the panel has simply been poorly arranged in a way that breaks the fundamental rules of proportion. The lights should hint at height, yet they draw the eye too low; the exhaust's position is conversely too high, and diverts the eye into a disjointed apprehension of the car's overall effect; the mouldings that connect them are a artistically barren mixture of an attempt to unite the features and random decoration. This creates a frustrating perception of visual and qualitative disunity; where the basic shape is good, but the important finer details of the bodywork have been ill-considered, and all impossible to ignore when considering ownership of perhaps one of the best driver's cars on the market. The perceived value of the car is very high, but the aesthetic value to anyone with an adult and refined discernment is strikingly absent. I only say all that because I think that the car as a driving machine is perhaps one of the more significant creations on the market today, but I hope that Pagani can find from somewhere a tasteful, talented designer with and vision to pen a new Zonda that is as good to look at as it is to drive.

Broom Broom:

Pagani are clearly capable of making a dynamically wonderful car, but visually, their products are garish and adorned with detail features that upset the impact of a basically good-looking, cab-forward body.....................

You are right, Pagani have definitely got room in their range for a beautiful supercar.

However, part of the current cars charm is that it is so garish.  It is a true supercar, in the mould of the original Lamborghini Countach (which in my eye's isn't' particularly good looking either).  It is a caricature, over the top, excessive in every way.  The styling highlights that.

As Richard Hammond once said (paraphrase), you want a supercar to make you feel like a ten year old boy, and that's exactly what the Pagani does.

TegTypeR:

However, part of the current cars charm is that it is so garish.  It is a true supercar, in the mould of the original Lamborghini Countach (which in my eye's isn't' particularly good looking either).

I think that I'm really making a partly subjective point that, if analysed in terms of how a car or any artistic creation conforms to something objectively correct, is also a statement of perception that the concept of visually fundamental disharmony and misproportion is impartially valid: as I contended, the layout of the rear lights is an example of something that is fundamentally wrong. It's so nuanced, though, that another person will argue that what I think is wrong at an objective level, is not objective at all because they like it.

I take your point almost completely about an interpretation of garishness, but I think you are comparing two different things in the Countach and the Zonda. I would say the Countach actually conforms to some objective aesthetics truths - the proportions and angles of the rear light clusters and the slope angle of the rear end were beautiful to my eye - but what you are calling garish in the Countach I would call outlandish, unashamedly exotic. In the Zonda, by comparison, the details are simply ugly and vulgar, which is what I mean by garish.

I imagine you see the Zonda details as attractive and unusual, and find that this combination hints at a rarefied object, and there's not much I can say to bring you around to my point of view; however, I simply disagree and hope that the next Zonda impresses the eye as much as it does the rest of the senses.

I do agree, though, that the body-kit that was fitted to the last iteration of the Countach - The Anniversary - was grotesque.