Horacio Pagani turns 70 this year, and instead of a cake with too many candles to count, the man got a hypercar. Actually, he’s getting three. The second of that trio just broke cover at Goodwood, and it goes by the name Huayra 70 Derecho. A derecho is a fast-moving storm system that cuts a line of destruction hundreds of miles long, and Pagani wants you to know this thing means business, even parked still on the lawn at Goodwood House.
Before we get to the car, a quick word on the man. Horacio Pagani grew up in Argentina obsessed with cars and composite materials long before carbon fiber became common in the industry. He moved to Italy, worked under Lamborghini’s wing building the Countach Evoluzione, then struck out on his own in 1991 because nobody would let him build cars his way. The Zonda arrived in 1999 and turned heads. The Huayra followed in 2011, named after an Andean wind god, and became the platform for basically every wild derivative Pagani has dreamt up since.
The Derecho is the latest of those dreams, built by the in-house Grandi Complicazioni skunkworks. The paint alone is a small miracle of chemistry, a transparent Pearl Orange and Ink Blue. The finish isn’t simply painted on, either. Pagani developed a transparent coating that allows the intricate fishbone carbon fiber weave to remain fully visible beneath the color, a process that takes far longer than conventional paintwork. It’s got titanium wheels, titanium brow accents above the headlights, and an open-top cabin trimmed in Ceramic White leather with Tricolore Blue stitching.
Mechanically, nothing’s been reinvented, and that’s fine, because what’s there is glorious. The 6.0-liter twin-turbo V12 from Mercedes-AMG makes 864 horsepower and a flat 811 lb-ft of torque from 2,800 all the way to 5,900 rpm. It’s paired with a proper seven-speed manual, in an era where virtually every hypercar has surrendered to paddle shifters.
Pagani remains one of the last manufacturers willing to pair prodigious horsepower with a traditional gated manual, making the Derecho as much a celebration of analog driving as Horacio Pagani himself.
Only three Huayra 70s will exist, and pricing has not been announced. History suggests eight figures wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. As for who gets to take Pagani’s birthday gift home, don’t expect a name. Pagani tends to guard client’s privacy as fiercely as it guards its carbon weave.
