Pagani Zonda S Roadster: The First Open Top Pagani

The Pagani Zonda S Roadster took the wildest supercar of its day and cut the roof off without breaking it. Same 7.3 liter AMG V12. Same shattering pace. Barely any extra weight. It was the first open top car Pagani ever built, and it is one of the rarest Zondas of all.

Cutting the roof off is the hard part

Turning a coupe into a convertible usually costs you. Take the roof away and the body flexes, so most makers bolt in heavy bracing to put the stiffness back. That adds weight, and weight is the enemy of everything a Zonda stands for.

Pagani refused to play it that way. Instead of loading up the sills with reinforcement, the team strengthened the firewall and the windscreen frame and tied it all together with billet alloy braces where the roof rails used to sit. The result is a roadster that weighs almost the same as the coupe. Pagani quoted a gain of around 30 kilograms. For an open car, that is close to nothing.

What engine the Zonda S Roadster uses

Behind the seats sits the engine that made the Zonda a legend, the Mercedes AMG 7.3 liter V12. It is one of the largest V12s ever put in a road car, and here it makes 555 horsepower and 553 lb ft of torque. Power runs through a six speed manual to the rear wheels. Zero to 60 mph takes about 3.7 seconds and the top speed sits north of 200 mph. Traction control and ABS were standard, there to manage the power rather than hide it.

A removable carbon roof

The roof is a single carbon fiber panel that lifts off by hand. It weighs next to nothing and stows away, so the Zonda goes from closed coupe to open roadster in a couple of minutes. Pagani also reworked the aerodynamics for the open body, adding a pair of NACA ducts to the rear engine cover to feed air where it was needed. The elliptical roll bar is built from carbon fiber and chrome molybdenum alloy, tied straight into the rear of the chassis for safety.

Built like a jewel

The Zonda has always been about more than numbers. Horacio Pagani calls his cars Una Macchina con Anima, a car with a soul, and the Roadster is where that shows. The cabin is hand stitched leather, aluminum machined from solid, and carbon fiber everywhere you look. The gauges overlap in a sculpted alloy pod. The toggle switches were modeled on an old Alfa Romeo. Every car was built to its owner's taste, like a tailored suit.

How rare the Zonda S Roadster is

Pagani announced a run of 40 Roadsters. The reality is far smaller. The factory has since confirmed that only around a dozen of the 7.3 S Roadsters were actually built, which makes it one of the scarcest Zondas ever made. That rarity shows in the values. Good examples now trade into the millions, and a right hand drive car is rarer still, with only a handful ever converted.

It drives better than it should

A car this fast and this rare could be a nightmare to use. The Zonda is the opposite. Road testers came away surprised at how easy it is to drive slowly, with light controls, a smooth clutch, and a clear view out over the front wheels. Then you open it up and it turns into something close to a Formula 1 car for the road. That mix, savage when you want it and calm when you do not, is exactly what Horacio Pagani was chasing.

Why the Zonda S Roadster matters

The Roadster proved Pagani could build an open supercar without giving anything up. No lost performance, no bloated weight, no compromise on craft. It set the template for every open Pagani that followed, right through to the Huayra Roadster. It is the first time Pagani took the roof off, and more than twenty years later it still looks like it landed from the future.