Pagani Zonda Cinque

“Pagani create carbon fibre masterpieces with four wheels and huge engines by Mercedes Benz AMG. Now, they are have gone one better. They’re building carbon-titanium cars, which are even lighter than any previous models”

- Anthony Crawford

Car Advice is lucky to have spent time in a Zonda. Very few media outlets in the world can claim so.

They are extremely fast, extremely expensive, extremely exclusive and street legal. At well over $1.6 million Australian dollars for a Zonda F, you can understand why these race cars for the road, are as rare as hen’s teeth.

When ultra supercar manufacturers build a special edition, the word “special” cannot be emphasised enough.

The Zonda Cinque is one of those cars. Just five examples will be built and of course, they are all sold, at a cost of 1million Euro, plus taxes. In Australian dollars, that’s easily two million big ones, and that’s provided, you were lucky enough to find out about the car, and wired your deposit, in time.

I said fast. A Zonda holds the record for the fastest lap for homologated cars at the Nurburgring circuit in Germany, with an extraordinary time of 7:27. To make sense of that time, the new Nissan GT-R, so called supercar killer, posted a time of 7:38.

There must be a tonne of money in Hong Kong, as the Zonda Cinque was created at the request of the carmaker’s dealer up there, “SPS Automotive Performance”.

If you really had that kind of money and you liked your cars, you would surely buy this edition.

All previous Zonda’s have been produced with a conventional gated gear shifter, but the Cinque comes standard with a Cima 6-speed sequential gearbox with paddles, as well as a gear lever on the central tunnel.

Remember, this car is predominately made from a carbon-titanium fibre and is ridiculously light, at 1210kg. So you won’t argue with me, when I say that 678bhp and 780Nm torque, is more than enough. Well, it’s good for a 0-100km/h sprint in 3.4 sec, and flat out, she’ll do over 350 km/h.

But the technology and engineering gains don’t stop there. Suspension is by Ohlins with Pagani specifications and is made with magnesium and titanium. Perhaps there will be yet another assault on the Nurburgring in one of these, as you have a choice of four different settings with 10 adjustments each. That’s a serious suspension system.

Even the exhaust system is fabricated from Inconel (superalloys)/ titanium and coated with ceramic.

And the list of ‘beyond bespoke’ components, goes on.

Carbon fibre steering wheel, Carbon fibre racing seats by Toora and covered in leather, APP monolitic forged wheels from aluminium and magnesium – 335/30/20 down the back and 255/35/19 up front.

Brembo carbon-ceramic, self-ventilated brakes are employed all round. These monsters will pull you up from 200-0 in a staggering 4.3 seconds!

There’s probably no chance in hell, of bringing you a road test of this car but later in the year, we hope to bring you a video and review of our Zonda F drive in Italy.