Why Cinque? According to the person who posted this news, and the picture above, only five of the beasts is to be made. We'll assume it's going to carry the same 7.3-Liter Mercedes V12 and will perform best at the track, though we'd still try and drive it down Lake Shore if given the chance. If the photo above entices you like it entices us we recommend buying lottery tickets. Now! (h/t to Joe) [TeamSpeed]

Technical specs are still unconfirmed, but the speculators suggest the new engine will be the thumping 680 HP dry-sump V8 lump from the McLaren Mercedes SLR 722 GT. We're not sure how much sense that makes, what with SLR production winding down, but then the Zonda isn't exactly the sort of car you justify with the left side of your brain. With 0-60 runs likely in the sub-three second range, your right foot will likely be the decision-maker. [AutoExpress]

As a stereo system, it is pretty average. The towers contain 350W speakers and a bass speaker that outputs through the Zonda-style exhaust pipes. It includes a dedicated amplifier. Those confusing platters are actually turntables, because Pagani is still living in the 1980s. No word on price, but if you can afford a Zonda, then this purchase shouldn't be too hard on the old pocketbook. [Uncrate]

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A few months back at Top Marques Monaco, I heard some slightly distressing news. Not only would there not be a Pagani Zonda F Roadster available to drive for the foreseeable future, but they also had just five left for sale. And that will be the end of the Zonda, one of the few supercar success stories in recent years. Not quite, in fact, as the Zonda F track project has gathered momentum and we can expect a backslapping, $1 million+ Ferrari FXX-style project. But in terms of the road cars then the end is nigh, and the high-rolling Top Marques show might have pushed it over the edge into extinction. They'll need to build the remaining cars, but that will be that until 2008.

I pretty much dealt with the fact I won't ever get the funds to buy a Zonda long ago, but now I can't have one, not a new one anyway, so if those lottery funds drop into my account right now it is still too late. And that's what confirmed it, I would have had one.

Some people say the Zonda is a little fussy, overly ornate and impractical. It managed to beach itself in inner city Paris on a memorable episode of Top Gear and is hardly the kind of machine you could happily drive round town and leave outside Starbucks. But, had the money popped into my hand, a Zonda F would have found its way into my drive.

The 650 bhp Clubsport version of the Zonda F is a magnificent beast, with a 7.3-litre AMG engine at its core. And when I finally got my invite to the Italian factory to drive the Zonda F hard top, it felt like a casual call from Shakira to see if I was free for dinner and sultry Latin adventures. This is the kind of car that defines careers like mine, it's why we turn up for work.

Pagani worked at Lamborghini as a carbon-fiber specialist and also supplied aerospace companies, but he had a vision for a car. And with the help of legendary driver Juan-Manuel Fangio he honed the Zonda concept for more than a decade before it hit the market in 1999. A brief run in the C12 S in England was a tantalizing look into its talents, but then the full bore Zonda F on Italian soil was something else.

The factory tour showed the precision that went in to each and every component. If the carbon-fiber weave isn't lined up perfectly the whole front section is thrown away, and Pagani has settled on a pace of building just 17 cars a year despite initial projections of 35.

In the flesh it is devastating, with the signature Gatling Gun exhaust at the rear and the cab-forward design of a Group C World Sportscar brought storming into the 21st Century. It's a modern design, using modern materials and intricate touches that could keep a real enthusiast poring over the car for hours with its respective nods to the past age.

Leather straps hold the luggage compartments at bay, the vents sit atop carbon-fiber swan's necks and the pedals look like the came from some 25th Century Grand Piano. The interior is easily overdone, and a muted shade of leather works best with the skeletal binnacle, the ornate, wooden flat-bottom wheel, exposed carbon-fibre and deeply crafted seats. With that aircraft-style central console there's enough jewelery inside this thing without the dramatic finishes on offer.

It's like climbing into a cockpit getting into the Zonda F and the olde world styling touches inside the car give it the instant character it needed to have, a USP to compete with the heritage of Ferrari and Lamborghini.

This car comes packed with electronic assistance, ABS brakes and a carbon-fibre monocoque and an Ohlins and Bilstein suspension set-up designed to soak up bumps in the road rather than jump around like an excited drunk on New Year's Eve.

You can't even stall it, as the car can cruise round town in sixth gear from just 500 revs and will blip the throttle for you to prevent embarrassing gaffes in front of 1000 gawping bystanders. It's amongst the easiest of supercars to drive and it weighs just 1230kg despite its slab-like sides and substantial proportions.

Acceleration, then, is predictably explosive, with the 60mph mark passing in 3.6s and the Zonda F will have racked up 125mph by the time you've counted to 10. We weren't allowed to test the top end speed of 216mph, but the way it blasted through the 100mph mark on a broken ribbon of Italian backroad confirmed it was more than up for the task.

Horatio Pagani was allowed to drive fast, and proved the point himself by diving into the driver's seat and setting off like his hair was on fire, mulching internal organs as I sat bewildered in the passenger seat. He braked later, harder and more aggressively than I ever would have with his half-million Euro show car.

There was the sound of traction control battling with Physics underneath, the dash lit up and then this broad inverted wing just took the line anyway. On track it is apparently a laugh riot, but then you'd need to be loaded beyond all of our wildest dreams to be able to bin your Zonda and the guy that does 20,000km a year in his probably has more fun out of his car than the one that uses it purely for track work.

Because he gets to soak up the noise of that charitably liberated 7.3-liter Mercedes engine blasted through a hydroformed sports exhaust built to F1 standards of fit and finish. At low revs it sounds like distant thunder, strangely insulated from the driver at normal speeds. Give the car its full head, though, and that glorious V12 feels like it's moved inside your inner ear as the car tears up the road.

Those that own a Zonda of any vintage now have a piece of rolling history and it is assured of instant classic status. Now we have to wait for 2008 and the new car, which will almost certainly debut at Geneva, but I do feel a pang of regret that I won't be able to call the factory and order my Zonda with a self-satisfied grin.

Like I say, made me realise that, if the funds were there, I genuinely might have. And the Zonda F joins an ever-growing list of cars I should have owned, if only life were different. If you had the money and thought about it, but didn't, you have missed something truly special. – Nick Hall

[Birmingham, UK-based Nick Hall's Car Hack's Notebook column runs whenever he has a free moment between flogging exotic tuners and supercars on European highways and test tracks. Right now, he's between sips of sherry cocktail in his favorite chaise lounge, positioned somewhere in southern Spain.]

Related:
Car Hack's Notebook: Top of the Top Marques [internal]

Days after leaked images revealed Pagani's new Zonda R clubsport (that's a club we wouldn't mind getting hazed for), official word has come from the Italian supercar builder on its newest model. The track-only Zonda R will get a 750-hp (523 ft-lbs of torque) version of the Mercedes AMG-sourced, 7.3-liter V12 that produces 680 hp in the Zonda F clubsport (594 hp in the street model). It'll be 40 cm longer nose to tail, with a slightly longer wheelbase. More pics to come from the land of the midnight cheese products. – Mike Spinelli

[via Autovisie.nl]

Related:
Geneva Pre-Show: Pagani Zonda R Club Racer [internal]

Now here's something. According to the super Swedes at Sportbilen.se, this is the car Pagani plans to show off in Geneva [NOTE: Actually, it's a conceptual rendering by a design student. Carry on NOTE 2: New rendering up. May be ore accurate. Grain of salt, and all that.]. It's called the Zonda R. It's a non-street-legal club racer powered by some manner of 750-hp Mercedes V12. It's Pagani's track-day version of the Ferrari Enzo Fxx and Maserati MC12. Compared to its street legal, $700,000 Zonda sibling, the R model is longer, lighter and lower, and has a longer wheelbase for the kind of stability only a slingshot dragster can provide. Only we're betting it can take corners too. More to come. – Mike Spinelli

V rldsexklusivt f r sportbilen: Zonda R! [Sportbilen.se]

Related:
Pagani Zonda Bests Ferrari, Maserati on TopGear Track [internal]

Rabbit, a Japan-based Porsche tuning shop, wants to put you in a Pagani Zonda for $50,000. Sound like a scam? Ok, so it's not a real, AMG V12-powered Pagani Zonda, but the Rabbit PG-Z will indeed play one on TV (if that's your thing). Using the Toyota MR2 as a starting point, the Rabbit bunch is creating the PG-Z to be a veritable Zonda doppelganger. They're only in the prototype stages — that's a hand-built wooden prototype in the picture, says AutoWeek — but the're serious about rendering it for real. They're just showing it off to gauge interest. Interested? [Gallery] – Mike Spinelli

Pennies for a Pagani [AutoWeek]

Related:
Pagani Zonda Bests Ferrari, Maserati on TopGear Track [internal]

Quickly, before YouTube ganks it again — and thanks to our brother/sister site obsessed with all things music — check out Jay-Z's latest music video, "Show Me What You Got" — featuring Danica Patrick in a Pagani Zonda S out-racing a Ferrari F430 driven by none other than Dale Earnhardt, Jr. — with Mr. Shawn Carter (aka Hova, aka S.Dot, aka Hov, aka Jigga, aka Lucky Lefty, aka Iceberg Slim, aka — ok, you get the picture, Jay-Z's got a lot of nicknames) in the passenger seat. You know, we kind of feel like this is totally a race Danica could win — one where she's got a car fully 70 hp faster than the competition. Still, we totally know Jay-Z's just going to say he lost cause she weighs less than he and Dale Jr. [Hat tip to will!] – Ray Wert

Videodrone: Jay-Z, "Show Me What You Got" [Idolator]

Related:
Danica Inching Toward NASCAR?; Danica Moving to NASCAR?; No NASCAR for Danica: She's With Andretti, Leather [internal]

We'll forgive the folks at Pagani for the nu-metal soundtrack of this promotional video. Seeing (and hearing) the Zonda F rip up the Italian countryside is worth suffring the clich dual guitars and digital drum kit. Seriously.

[via Motor Authority]

Related:
Birthing a V12: How a Ferrari Engine is Built [internal]

To paraphrase Vince Lombardi, death isn't everything; it's the only thing. Well, it's the only thing guaranteed to stop a supercar owner from enjoying their extreme machine. Okay, that and the IRS. And a messy divorce, which, believe me, makes death look like a pint of H agen-Dazs dulce de leche caramel. But then, the French call orgasm "the little death," and driving a supercar is one of the rare occasions where you can experience a proper orgasm without making a mess. Unless you crash and die in a mangled heap of metal, flesh, bone and blood. On we go...

Let's say you want to drive a car fast enough to finally catch that fucking Road Runner and skin the anorexic bird alive, but you know there's a good chance you'll end up like Wile E. Coyote. So what's the safest fast car a singularity of Benjamins can buy? What ultra-whip won't punish an amateur with the ultimate sanction, in terms of both active and passive safety (i.e. not hitting things and hitting things)?

[NB: this is no joke. I've lost friends to supercar "mishaps." There are plenty of cars with reputations for dubious high speed handling and questionable safety. You have been warned.]

Pagani Zonda F
Price: $741k
Active safety: *****
Passive safety: ***

I've driven a great many cars whose performance capabilities make me feel like a two-year-old fondling a Rubik's cube. The Zonda is the easiest hyperextreme, way-the-fuck-out-there supercar a rookie can drive without playing nudge, nudge; wink, wink with The Grim Reaper. The Zonda may look like a '70's Group C race car, but it drives like a Lotus Elise — only bigger, safer, stronger and four thousand per cent faster. I'm sure it has something to do with the 7.3-liter 620-horse Mercedes V12 nestling in its doublewide rump (with vertical slide out), which offers the same linear throttle response as an S-Class 12-pot, cubed.

Equally important for the financial future of a wealthy driver's scions, the Zonda steers, handles and brakes more predictably than a Bruce Willis movie, at speeds guaranteed to make your eyes bleed. You can keep up with a Ferrari Enzo in this car without really having a clue how you're doing it, and not die once. And best of all, because the Zonda isn't US street legal, you don't have to worry about Boston drivers.

As for passive safety, who knows? I can only find one low-speed smash on www.wreckedexotics.com, and the aforementioned US prohibition means Pagani doesn't have to crash test the Zonda. (Three $741k cars into a wall? That has GOT to hurt.) Sr. Pagani claims up, down and sideways in Argentinean-accented Italian that his carbon fiber supercar is a paragon of passenger protection. Either that or he was saying he knows a great place for charasco in Milan.

Yes, well, it's important to note that carbon fiber may not be the passive safety panacea supercar makers claim. Yes, it absorbs huge forces. But one hit and the material's literally gone. On the race track, where major shunts usually involve a single impact, that's fine. Out in the real world, you do NOT want to hurtle towards a variety of stationary and moving objects in a one-hit wonder. It's something stupid rich people should think about, if they can be bothered.

The Ford GT
Price: $151,245 (and not a penny more)
Active safety: ***
Passive safety: *****

Here we have a supercar with 550hp and no traction control. I reckon that's a good thing: knowing that there's no electronic nanny to save your bacon when the pork hits the fan makes you drive more cautiously. Yes, the car has a Dave Edmunds philosophy — you got yourself in, get yourself out — but you CAN get yourself out of trouble with only a modicum of effort. The Ford GT is as benign at the limit as a symphony hall ticket taker.

Well, that's the theory. As Spinelli points out, I may be full of shit. Admittedly, stupid people generally need as much protection from themselves as a carmaker can give them. And yes, I've got a piece of a Ford GT's front spoiler leaning against my wall that says Spinelli has something of a point. But I didn't crash the thing and the guy who did never touched the brakes once.

Anyway, the Ford GT is a passive safety poster child. Its extruded aluminum space-frame chassis is stiffer than a porn star at a hen party, yet deforms with energy absorbing lan. Like all these hyperspeed sleds (and a Smart Fourtwo for that matter), the Ford GT cocoons its occupants in a good old-fashioned passenger safety cell.

Time will tell if the GT's drivers withstand the test of time, but I've seen enough speed-crazed nouveau riche GT owners emerge from a lunatic thrash intact to believe that the taste police will have their work cut out for them for some time to come.

Porsche 911 Turbo
$141,200 (with every box ticked)
Active Safety: *****
Passive Safety: *****

The Turbo is the stupid driver's supercar angel. When it comes to not hitting shit, it's peerless. Visibility: panoramic. Acceleration: linear. Steering: telekinetic. Handling: flawless. Brakes: as close as you'll ever get to an automotive pause button. Equally important, the Turbo integrates all these dynamic facets flawlessly, combining perfectly predictable mechanical harmony with a manageable stream of mission-critical feedback.

All this and the world's best four-wheel drive system. With PSM (Porsche Stability Management) replacing Jesus in the shotgun-riding department, the new 4WD Turbo can instantly send 100% of power to the front wheels when needed (up from 40%). That means the Turbo won't lose grip on the road even if its driver loses his grip on reality.

Driving the uber-Porker at mind-bending velocities is largely a matter of point and shoot. In the Zonda, the limits of adhesion can only be breached by truly determined hooniganism. In the Turbo, the limits aren't quite as astronomical, but the PSM constantly sorts out the dirty work of maintaining traction. You pretty much have to be blind-sided or aim at something to hit it.

If you're THAT stupid and/or unlucky, the Turbo's brick-shit-house construction may award a bonus life. Its highly evolved, crash-tested structure includes an occupant safety cell made of boron steel. Amazingly, the Turbo is one of the few supercars equipped with side impact airbags (which may have saved the victims of the GT crash linked above). When bad things happen to wealthy people, the Turbo is a relatively good place to be.

Ultimately, the safest supercar is the one that never moves. Consciously or not, that may be one reason why so many exotics are such garage queens. So before you laugh at people who buy a supercar for its safety — puffing your chest out at your machismo, self-restraint and skill — remember: stupid people who know their limitations are smarter than smart people who don't.

[by Robert Farago]

The boys at Eurocar Blog offer up a pic of the new Pagani Zonda F roadster by way of Vincent at Autoblog.nl by way of the watermark-happy kids at AutoWeek. It sure is a nice time to be a billionaire, considering the new roadster will cost in the very exclusive neighborhood of $650,000. For thus extent of f-u-all money, one is swathed in carbon-fiber and sent on their way via an AMG-sourced powerplant producing 602 cavalli vapore (that's horsepower) or, choosing the Clubsport model, 650. Expect it to get a proper unveiling at the Geneva show.

Pagani Zonda F Roadster [Eurocar Blog]

Related:
Pagani Zonda Bests Ferrari, Maserati on TopGear Track [internal]

The Pagani Zonda F supercar has officially bested the terror twins (Ferrari Enzo and Maserati MC12), which had formerly owned the fastest times on the "TopGear" test track. On a recent episode, the AMG V12-powered Zonda — piloted by TG's shadowy test-driver, The Stig — traversed the track in 1:18.4, a mere half second off the MC12's time and 0.6 seconds from the Enzo's. No word yet on whether Richard Hammond could see over the $300,000 Zonda's steering wheel.

Pagani Zonda F on TopGear [Italiaspeed]

Related:
Zonda Introduces a New Supercar [internal]