Pagani Huayra Tricolore Hypercar

The first thing I notice about the Pagani Huayra Tricolore is the perfectly angled Italian national colours that stripe each side from behind the rear wheel arch stopping just before the front wheel arch. The angle mirrors perfectly the sloping livery design on the Italian Air Force aerobatic team’s Aermacchi MB-339A PAN aircraft. It’s such small things that give you confidence that a finished vehicle will have left no stone unturned. The Pagani Huayra Tricolore will be an ultra-limited edition model with just three of the hypercars being built – and each will sell for around 5.5 million euros each. That’s rather a lot of money, so what exactly will you be getting?

The idea dates back to 2010 and the Zonda Tricolore in celebration of the 50th birthday of the Italian Air Force (Frecce Tricolore) display team. The team sits alongside the UK’s Red Arrows and the US Air Force’s Thunderbirds when it comes to being the most well know aerobatics display teams on the planet. Frecce Tricolore claims to be the largest patrol in the world too, featuring ten Aermacchi MB-339A PAN jets.

Ten years on from the Zonda Tricolore and the Frecce Tricolore are celebrating their 60th anniversary, and Pagani will be providing the Huayra Tricolore as a celebratory model. One thing that is a break from the expected will be the nomenclature; whereas one might expect just three vehicles to be badged 1 to 3 indicating how limited they are, in fact the Pagani Huayra Tricolore will be badged/numbered ‘0’, ‘1’ and ‘10’ – this is apparently in recognition of three key members of the renowned aerobatic team: while ‘zero’ is the ground based Commander – the director of the display that happens above, ‘one’ refers to the leader of the group during manoeuvres, and ‘ten’ has the task of splitting from formation to carry out some of the more impressive manoeuvres in the air.

Each of the three vehicles will feature bodyshells built from an advanced composite material specially developed for this project that is claimed to be far more rigid. Up front, a newly developed front splitter will increase front-end downforce, while extra air will be forced into the intercooler to maintain engine temperature thanks to front bumper cooling vents. Air is also channelled to the engine via an air scoop at the top the car. The carbon-fibre spoiler, which is effectively part of the engine lid, stabilises and assists with those front-end downforce gains that the new splitter gives.

The Huayra Tricolore has some aeronautical related quirks too, like a pitot tube to measure the air speed as the car hurtles along and – if you look closely – that rear spoiler hints at the Aermacchi’s tail fin. Even the alloy wheel design hints at a propeller design (though you might need to point that one out to people).

You’re probably getting the idea by now – this isn’t just a rebadged sports car, there’s been quite some effort put into actually connecting the Huayra Tricolore to the aircraft it celebrates. The interior too has been designed to mirror the cockpit of the Aermacchi, with lashings of carbon-fibre and aerospace-style billet aluminium.

Performance-wise, the Pagani Huayra Tricolore isn’t going to disappoint. A 6-litre twin-turbocharged AMG V12 will give an impressive 829bhp with 811lb ft torque. Now, the ‘standard’ Huayra BC hypercar was an impressive beast in itself, but the Huayra Tricolore intelligently tweaks the design and tech a little more. The Huayra BC can accelerate from 0-60mph in around 2.2 seconds and has a top speed of around 236mph – so we can only look forward to further Tricolore figures and testing in the future with much anticipation.

Image Credit: pagani.com