The leading story on the lastest racingdeal.com newsletter begins as follows -
"Pagani Zonda – Supercars For The Discriminating Buyer
The Pagani Zonda is a supercar produced by Italian car manufacturer Pagani. It debuted in 1999 and continues through the present .... Some early Zonda engineering was done by Formula One champion, Juan Manuel Fangio. The car was originally to be named for him, the "Fangio F1", but the name was changed upon his death in 1995."
Eh? What 'early Zonda engineering' would the great man, who was in poor health during his final years, have carried out?
Sounds a little fishy to me. I checked the date and it is July and not April.
Does anyone know any more?
Fangio & Pagani Zonda - what was the story?
Started by
simonlewisbooks
, Jul 16 2007 10:54
3 replies to this topic
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#2
nmansellfan
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- 454 posts
- Joined: April 02
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Posted 16 July 2007 - 12:02
The only info i have heard is that Horatio Pagani was a close friend of Fangio, and Fangio was instrumental in securing a deal for Mercedes-Benz to supply the AMG tuned V12 engines to Pagani (Jason Plato when reviewing the latest car on the motoring programme 'Fifth Gear' said something like 'When Mr. Fangio talked, Mercedes-Benz always listened'). How much truth there is to Fangio taking part in the engineering of the car i don't know...
#3
jarama
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- 1,129 posts
- Joined: September 00
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Posted 16 July 2007 - 21:47
Just a few months ago (in May, taking advantage of the trip to Italy to live this year's Mille Miglia retrospective) a few friends and I had the opportunity to visit the factory Pagani and to deal an appointment with Horacio Pagani himself.
Horace turned out to be a very cordial person and answered us with detail to our questions.
As nmansellfan has pointed, Horacio & the big man from Balcarce were close friends, and this led to Fangio to secure the deal with Mercedes to suply the engines for the new car maker.
Being the things like that, the Pagani Zonda - that was back then an advanced project - had to be been called Pagani Fangio. Sadly, the death of the great champion led Horacio Pagani to avoid the use of Fangio's name in the new car, to prevent a general thinking that he was using the name to extract profit of the famous surname.
Then the name Zonda, coming from a typical wind of The Andes was retained, with the F being added later in Fangio's honour.
Carles.
Horace turned out to be a very cordial person and answered us with detail to our questions.
As nmansellfan has pointed, Horacio & the big man from Balcarce were close friends, and this led to Fangio to secure the deal with Mercedes to suply the engines for the new car maker.
Being the things like that, the Pagani Zonda - that was back then an advanced project - had to be been called Pagani Fangio. Sadly, the death of the great champion led Horacio Pagani to avoid the use of Fangio's name in the new car, to prevent a general thinking that he was using the name to extract profit of the famous surname.
Then the name Zonda, coming from a typical wind of The Andes was retained, with the F being added later in Fangio's honour.
Carles.
#4
Pablo Vignone
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- 312 posts
- Joined: April 04
Member
Posted 18 July 2007 - 03:24
Pagani showed Fangio the first drawings of his prototype early in 1988. I don't know whether Fangio give som advice regarding the car. maybe that is the engineering input... But Pagani asked Fangio about the chance of having his name in the car as an homage, and Fangio reply that only with M-B engines the car could have held the Fangio's name (or something like that...)
