February 21, 2004 Two elite sports car brands, Noble and Pagani, will soon become available in Australia. Motor Group Australia, the importer of MG and Rover vehicles, will introduce the new marques by showcasing the Pagani Zonda Roadster and Noble M12 GTO-3R at the 2004 Melbourne Motor Show, commencing February 28. The AUD$1.2 million Pagani Zonda is one of the world's most exclusive automobiles and arguably the fastest production car available in the world at this point in time.
Two elite sports car brands, Noble and Pagani, will soon become available in Australia. Motor Group Australia, the importer of MG and Rover vehicles, will introduce the new marques by showcasing the Pagani Zonda Roadster and Noble M12 GTO-3R at the 2004 Melbourne Motor Show, commencing February 28. The AUD$1.2 million Pagani Zonda is one of the world's most exclusive automobiles and arguably the fastest production car available in the world at this point in time.
Only 40 limited edition Zonda roadsters will be produced and they will all be 'made-to-measure' cars built according to the car owner's choice of materials and details such as rare leathers, hand-tailored by PAGANI's craftsmen, or bespoke components in aluminium and carbon fibre. The result, according to pagani, is 'a symphony of sights, aesthetic elements, smells and sounds that matches the taste and personality of the lucky driver.
''Every Zonda Roadster will be an extraordinary and very personal object of desire with his own history. Every Zonda Roadster is and will be a 'a Car with a Soul'.Inspired by the legendary Sauber Mercedes Group C "Silver Arrow", the Zonda is powered by a 555HP 7.3 litre V12 AMG Mercedes-Benz engine with Pagani's own Traction Control and ABS safety systems from the Zonda S.
The roadster has a carbon fibre chassis built to an extreme rigidity level - 18.000 Nm/degree in torsional rigidity, 9.000 N/mm in flexional rigidity, and a dry weight of 1280 kilograms, which is attained with carbon-fibre bodywork and the whole vehicle has what the makers refer to as 'Formula One build-quality'.
The wheels, adding to the car's unique styling and technology, are a Fomb-APP creation: one piece forged aluminium rims with 255/35/19 and 345/35/19 Michelin tires specially developed for the Zonda.
'The Pagani Zonda represents the pinnacle of super sports car manufacturing and engine technology,' according to Motor Group Australia Marketing Manager Ross Meyer. 'It is unquestionably the most exclusive Italian sports car available in the world, delivering an unsurpassable driving experience.''The quality of workmanship, especially the attention to detail, really needs to seen to be believed. Best of all it is available in right-hand drive.'
This is not the usual pre-launch hyperbole of a marketing manager - the Zonda regularly gets eulogised by the motoring press around the world thanks to its handling ('like an Elise with 500hp') and it's ('time/distance bending') power.Few cars get the type of press which has been lavished on the Pagani. Here are a few other examples:In November 2002, highly-respected UK monthly motoring magazine Car tested the Zonda against 20 performance supercars and named it 'Performance Car of the Year'.
From that article, 'what you cannot argue with is that this car makes people walk into lamp-posts, spill their coffee and in one memorable instance, fall over. For the first half mile I was convinced the speedo was reading in kilometers per hour instead of miles, such was the sheer stupidity of the numbers.'Another of the World's most prestigious auto magazines, Sportauto in Germany, ran a head-to-head in 2002 between what they considered to be the two fastest roadgoing cars in the world - the Pagani Zonda and the Lamborghini Murcielago.
In the performace testing, the Zonda was two seconds quicker than the Lamborghini in the 0 to 200km/h to 0 time -15.9 seconds against 17.8 for the Lamborghini. SportAuto also put both cars around the the Nurburgring and Hockenheim race tracks to see which was truly the best race car - the Pagani was 0.3 seconds faster around Hockenheim and 6 (yes, six) seconds faster around 'the ring.' In effect, the Pagani Zonda how holds the record (fastest lap) for all homologated cars on these two tracks.Finally, from UK magazine AUTOCAR: 'Most AUTOCAR staff had given up on the idea of ever experiencing what Pagani gave us this year with its Zonda C12S. You see, the joy of being present at the birth of a legend has been played out over the years during fascinating hours listening to hacks who saw the covers whipped off the Lamborghini Muira back in 1966. They said we'd never see the likes of it again and deep down we all agreed. Then Horatio Pagani arrived and proved us wrong.'
The Noble is a car of a different character to the Pagani, though it gives away little in terms of performance to much more expensive cars - the Noble M12 GTO-3R will be priced at approximately AUD$200,000.'These exciting vehicles will appeal to very different buyer profiles.
The Noble GTO-3R is an undiluted sports car in its truest sense. We, like the European and UK press, have been impressed by Noble's expertise and ability to build exceptional low volume sports cars that drive and perform on par with vehicles twice their price. This is an extremely rewarding vehicle,' said Meyer.
'Whilst these are different vehicles appealing to distinctly different sports car buyers; their commonality lies in their blistering performance. Both vehicles are able to accelerate 0-60 mph in approximately 3.7 seconds. This would make them arguably the fastest standard production vehicles available in Australia.' Pricing and distribution details are yet to be finalised, however, it is planned initial distribution outlets will be set up in both Sydney and Melbourne. www.mgroveraustralia.com.au
