Pagani Utopia Roadster: Making V12s Better With More Noise

Pagani has cut the roof off its V12-powered Utopia, creating the Utopia Roadster.

Roadsters sit on a set of staggered 21-inch front and 22-inch rear wheels equipped with Pirelli P Zero Corsa Cyber tires. Basically, they’re “smart” tires. These will communicate data like ABS status, traction control, and slip to the car’s computers to help it maximize any available grip. Though the tires are new, the engine is not. Aft of the seats sits the coupe’s Mercedes-AMG-sourced twin-turbocharged 6.0-liter V-12 engine paired to either a seven-speed manual or a seven-speed automatic.

Output is also unchanged, at 852 horsepower and 811 pound-feet of torque straight to the back two wheels. All that power will get you to 217 mph, which is a few mph short of the coupe, likely due to structural changes made as a result of cutting an entire roof off. Oh well.

What’s truly impressive about the Utopia Roadster is not the lack of a roof, or the exposed carbon fiber, or the exquisite craftsmanship, though all of these are truly incredible. Somehow, Pagani has circumvented the laws of the natural world, producing a roadster that weighs exactly the same as its hard-top counterpart.

The Roadster also weighs less than just about every performance car on the market today, at just 2,822 pounds. How’s it done? Fundamentally, crazy science stuff that’d take another 800 words to sort through. In short, Pagani credits more than 40 composite materials in addition to an extremely strong and light carbo-titanium monocoque chassis with the Roadster’s stupefying curb weight.

Sans the carbon fiber roof, which features a window, the interior space is indistinguishable from the coupe. Of course, the Roaster will be just as rare as any other Utopia. 130 will be made, and in case you care, they’ll run whichever plutocrat can afford one around $3.4 million USD.

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