The story of Horacio Pagani and his eponymous company is now known the world over, but it had very humble beginnings. Through extraordinary hard work, personal financial investment, engineering ingenuity, and overriding passion, Horacio Pagani formed Modena Design to provide composites expertise. From Modena Design, Pagani Automobili S.p.A. was founded to develop a dream that would become the Zonda.

A key event in the development of the Zonda was sealed with the help of Juan Manuel Fangio. Shortly before Fangio died, he helped Pagani secure supply of Mercedes-Benz’s legendary M120 V-12 engines. Incredibly, the Zonda would take five years after this deal to be revealed to the world, mainly due to the car being developed by Horacio Pagani himself without a large engineering team behind him. The purity of Pagani’s single-minded vision for the Zonda is one of the reasons why the model is today one of the most revered cars in the world.

Unveiled at the 1999 Geneva International Motor Show, the Zonda C12 was powered by a 6.0-litre version of the engine tuned by AMG. Weighing in at a claimed 1,250 kilograms, it could accelerate to 100 km/h from a standstill in 3.7 seconds and top out at nearly 300 km/h. Due to their handmade nature, Zondas have always taken a huge amount of time to build, and only five cars were completed in the first year of production before the 7.0-litre S version was announced with additional design upgrades to the front and rear clams. Two years later in 2002, the final capacity for the Zonda of 7.3 litres was revealed, the ultimate iteration of the M120 V-12, widely regarded as one of greatest engines ever to be produced out of Stuttgart. In addition, the Roadster version was first made available, adding another capability to the hugely talented model.

As Pagani’s reputation grew, customers’ demands for unique specifications grew so special editions began to emerge, and a Zonda S was prepared for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. As the Ferrari Enzo, Porsche Carrera GT, and Bugatti Veyron were launched, Pagani updated the Zonda again with the F, the ultimate production version. Special editions in series of five appeared such as the Cinque and Tricolore.

Keeping close to his motorsport origins, Horacio Pagani developed the Zonda R in 2007 with the prime aim of taking the lap record of the Nürburgring Nordschleife for non-road-legal cars, something it achieved by beating Ferrari’s 599XX by over 10 seconds.

With the Tricolore and R, it seemed as though the Zonda had reached its zenith, yet Pagani took the motoring world by surprise when it announced the 760 RS. It seemed that customers wanted the thrill of a Zonda R on the road, so Pagani had made it a mission to surpass the R’s 739 horsepower with AMG’s engineers bringing the engine power up to 760 horsepower with a 7,500 rpm redline. To help handle the power, a seven-speed paddle-shift automated-manual gearbox was developed, boosting acceleration and top speed even further.

Pagani’s improvements for the 760 weren’t merely mechanical; the chassis was redesigned to be built out of carbo-titanium, essentially carbon fibre with titanium fibres interwoven through the composite. This development not only created a stiffer platform but shed even more weight from a car that was already considered featherweight compared to the competition.

The Zonda LM marked the first time a Pagani customer had requested that concepts from Le Mans were utilised for a Zonda such as the unique light cluster. Using the identity of a Zonda S 7.3 Roadster, this Zonda LM Roadster was built using knowledge from the Zonda R and was an evolution of the 760, inheriting the remarkable engine and gearbox. According to Pagani, due to the unique modifications, the LM project required a huge amount of research and development, including six months of road and track testing. It was the most challenging Zonda-based project that Pagani had carried out for a customer at the time.

Following its delivery to the consigning owner, this incredible Zonda LM Roadster has participated in several Pagani Radunos, Supercar Owners Circle tours, and passing appearances at events throughout Europe. The odometer displays 9,560 kilometres at the time of cataloguing.

Today, only 140 Zonda road cars exist, an extraordinarily low number for any supercar. Celebrating its 25th anniversary during 2024, the Zonda is now regarded as one of the greatest supercars ever made, spoken of in the same sentence as the McLaren F1, Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR, and Porsche 911 GT1. It is incredibly rare for a Zonda to be offered at public auction, the last time being at RM Sotheby’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix sale in 2019. This LM Roadster is one of the highest specification Zondas in the world. It will be unlikely that another of this outstanding quality will reach the market again soon.