Pagani teases hardcore Huayra BC Roadster

ENIGMATIC Italian hypercar brand Pagani is set to unleash a hardcore BC version of its $5.5 million Huayra Roadster, with two teaser images uploaded to social media accompanied by the captions “a tremendous science and design challenge” and “a triumph of beauty, an ode to Renaissance”.

The first image shows the new car’s headlights glinting through the stretched fabric of a black custom-fitted car cover, while in the second, the cover has been raised slightly to provide glimpses of the track-focussed bodywork and wheels – including a huge rear wing.

Confirming this being the anticipated open-top Huayra BC is the use of hashtag ‘#roadsterbc’ on social media posts and, curiously, the social media profiles of video game CSR Racing are also tagged.

A virtual debut in the CSR Racing game seems obvious, but real-world appearances of the latest Pagani are tipped to be either at Monterey Car Week or Pebble Beach, both of which take place in the United States next month.

When the Huayra Roadster was revealed in 2017, Pagani Automobili founder and chief designer Horacio Pagani described at length the complexities of making the convertible Huayra 70kg lighter than the coupe to achieve a final mass of just 1280kg.

As the Huayra BC coupe weighs just 1218kg, the Roadster version could weigh just 1148kg if Pagani repeats the weight savings it made on the standard model – hence the caption, “a tremendous science and design challenge”.

Also, the standard Huayra Roadster’s 6.0-litre twin-turbo Mercedes-AMG V12 produces 562kW of power and 1000Nm of torque, which is 7kW more but 100Nm less than the BC coupe.

It follows that if Pagani can’t quite match the weight difference between the standard coupe and Roadster, it could instead extract a little more engine performance.

The BC designation of hardcore Huayras is tribute to the first Pagani Automobili customer Benny Caiola, a friend of Horacio Pagani who passed away in 2010.