Spy Shots: 2011 Pagani C9

By Nelson Ireson

Nelson Ireson

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Nelson is an Editor at High Gear Media focusing on reviewing cars and covering the hottest topics in luxury and performance cars, car culture, and... More

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2011 Pagani C9 supercar spy shots

Unadulterated, bombastic carbon-fiber insanity--the current Pagani Zonda and its several variants are the embodiment of what it is to be a supercar. And its replacement, the C9, looks set to have even more more, and it'll be headed to the U.S., as well. Sadly, these latest spy shots show the car in a very unfortunate state. The driver of this prototype managed to lose control and crash into a center barrier of a highway in Germany while testing the car at high speeds. Fortunately, he was left relatively unscathed.

Details on the car are surprisingly good, thanks to Horacio Pagani's own words. He's said that the car will be powered by a twin-turbo 6.0-liter V-12 engine sourced from Mercedes-AMG. Output is expected to hover around 700 horsepower and 737 pound-feet of torque.

That's a bit less than the race-inspired Zonda R's 750 horses, but it's still in the stratosphere of supercar output, with only a handful of cars--the Bugatti Veyron and Shelby SSC Ultimate Aero TT, for example--stretching beyond into interplanetary space.

Planned production is tipped at just 60 cars per year, though that's an almost four-fold increase from the current 16 hand-built cars per year. The boost comes from a planned move to a new production facility. Construction will still be a painstaking process, however, as the C9 is a new car from the ground up, with 3,770 new parts.

As Pagani ramps up for C9 production, the Zonda will slowly cease construction by September. Expect a debut towards the end of the year.