The Pagani Utopia Roadster Doesn’t Care About Electrification. Just Driving Pleasure

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear about a new sports car, supercar, or hypercar debuting? Has it gone fully electric… or maybe hybrid? Probably. It’s just how things are nowadays. Horacio Pagani doesn’t care about that nonsense. What he cares about is beauty and performance, and boy does the new Pagani Utopia Roadster deliver on those fronts.

Two years after the release of the Utopia Coupe, Horacio’s dream factory is pumping out its open-cabin sibling, the stunning and just-as-powerful Utopia Roadster. It retains what makes the Utopia—and every other Pagani—so special: mind-blowing attention to detail and, of course, a twin-turbo AMG V12 engine. Like in the coupe, it still produces 864 hp and a staggering 811 lb-ft of torque. It applies that power via a traditional seven-speed manual transmission (or an optional transversal automatic from Xtrac), and remains just rear-wheel drive. The Utopia Roadster sits on 21-inch wheels up front and 22 in the rear. The monolithic aluminum alloy wheels are wrapped in Pirelli P Zero Corsa rubber, though I love that Pagani also offers a set of winters for the brave souls who dare drive their multi-million-dollar cars in the winter.

Like all Italian cars, however, the Utopia Roadster isn’t just about its specs or even its performance. It’s about its looks; it’s beauty. The presence of a car of this magnitude can’t be overlooked in the chase of acceleration or top speed, and I’d dare say that the Roadster is even more beautiful than the Coupe—especially in the red carbon sample featured here. The car’s profile without a roof is stunning, revealing an exquisitely crafted cabin done in a way that only Pagani can. Even the most experienced car designers struggle to design a car that looks great with the top both on and off, though Horacio and his team nailed it here. That said, I find it comical that with the roof off, the open space between the top of the windshield and the flying buttresses is dominated by the rearview mirror peeking out into the air.

Despite the removable roof, Pagani kept the upward-opening butterfly doors, which feature a revised mechanism to function with the new architecture. The Roadster can be transformed into an open- or closed-cabin hypercar simply by removing or attaching its lightweight carbon roof that stows behind the seats when not in use. In fact, Pagani considers the removable roof so special that in its press release, it highlights that it can be used in three different ways. It can be attached to the car for a coupe-like driving experience or to shelter from the elements, it can be removed for al fresco driving, and the third is that it can even be used as art. “The hard-top can be placed on a stand, transforming it into a piece of design to be looked at and admired.” Turns out that for a few million bucks you get not just a car, but also some art for your house.

As an engineer and designer, Horacio knows how to make beautiful things, but perhaps most relevant to his hypercar empire is his ability to engineer extremely complex components. This includes researching and pioneering different materials, hence the Utopia Roadster features over 40 formulas of composite materials, including Pagani’s own Carbo-Titanium HP62-G2 and Carbo-Triax HP62. The deployment of these various forms of carbon resulted in the Roadster weighing the same as the Coupe: 2,822 pounds.

If you’ve ever seen a Pagani in person, you know that these aren’t small cars—and not to mention they’ve got a honkin’ V12 in the back. To put this into perspective, the Utopia Roadster is nearly 500 pounds lighter than a Toyota GR Corolla—456 pounds, to be precise. This is even more impressive when you consider the Roadster is 10 inches wider, 10 inches longer, and 13 inches lower than the spicy hatchback, yet pumps out 564 more horsepower. I know comparing a $40,000 Toyota against an Italian hypercar with two more zeros in its price tag is unfair, but this is to highlight the rarified air that Pagani gives its lucky clients.

Speaking of clients, the Modenese automaker typically does not reveal pricing for its creations, and the new Utopia Roadster isn’t an exception. Most of its customers simply aren’t that concerned, but also, each sample is highly customized by its owner, making every single one of them different. If you’d want to order one of its fixed-roof siblings right now, you’re likely to spend between $3.5 and $4 million, so my guess is that the Roadster will command around $4 million or more. Time to play the lotto.

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