Since then Pagani Zonda makes its debut at the Geneva Motor Show in 1999, I tried to understand why people think it looks nice. Built to celebrate 25th anniversary of the original Zonda, Istituto Europeo di Design put together this beautiful fluid concept update to the ancient Zonda, known as Alisea.
From its quaint little beady eyes to its slim rearview mirrors and sharp angles everywhere, the original Pagani has always had a mysterious and nondescript shape. Obviously the Zonda is a technological marvel of speed and every detail of the car’s construction is painstakingly crafted with hand-crafted perfection, but I’ve always found it an eyesore. Alisea is almost perfect.
While the Zonda is fragmented and unfinished, the Alisea seems finished and refined. This is a car that continues the sweeping elegance front to back, but does so in a way that maintains the slim minimalism of the Zonda without resorting to the bulky and ineffective lines of the Huayra or Utopia . Someone really needs to take the designer pen out of Horacio’s hands. Let him work on the technical side, where he excels, but his form is completely out of control.
Alisea is a thesis project carried out by a group of 24 design students studying the Master Course in Transport Design at IED Torino. They deserve recognition for this work and hopefully their expertise will be applied to the field of automotive design in the next few decades across the globe. Keep an eye on these names, I think they will go far.
Andrea Boffa (Italy), Enrichetta Maria Borsano (Italy), Ludwig Brenninkmeijer (Netherlands), Daria Butenko (Russia), Andrea Caibugatti (Italy), Joan De La Plata Perich (Spain), Mausam Pramod Dhande (India) , Aayush Dutta (India), Sharang Kulkarni (India), Txomin Munitxa Arrinda (Spain), Yash Vishnubhai Panchal (India), Simon Rapisarda (Australia), Hariprasad Uthaman Chukkasseri (India), Jayakrishnan Anandan (India India), Sara Cancelli (Italy), Pablo Alejandro Hidrobo Lapuerta (Ecuador), Pritish Karmi (India), Tomas Knaze (Slovakia), Vaibhav Krishna (India), Ya-Hsin Liu (Taiwan – Formosa), Luis David Parra Rubio (Mexico), Davide Patruno (Italy), Tan Thanh Dien (China), Rongning Xue (China).
The project is supported by OZ Racing, Pirelli and Lechler.
Alisea proves that Horacio Pagani was on the right track with the Zonda years ago, but it just needed a little more tweaking to be just as good. It would probably be impossible to achieve true greatness in design with the eyes of 1999. After 25 years of revisions, Pagani’s designs have gotten worse, but these students tried to shorten it’s down to the basics and getting through the process.
Many of the Zonda’s signature design details are carried over, including the central quad exhaust at the rear, slim mirror stems protruding from the A-pillar, forward-focused cockpit and bulging front wheel arches. It’s unmistakably a Pagani, without the same design mistakes as the original.
Everything that I couldn’t understand about the Zonda was clearly noticed in a direct comparison with the Alisea. I love her. I will walk through hell for her.
