Pagani C9 mule spied

The Pagani C9 testing in South Africa - image from Easycarblog

Ahead of the launch of the new Pagani C9 in the Autumn, the C9 has been spotted hot weather testing in South Africa.

A couple of weeks ago we reported that Horacio Pagani had been talking about the new Pagani C9 to the Argentinian press. The C9, in case you didn’t know, is Pagani’s replacement for the Zonda and is due to be revealed alter this year.

The Pagani C9 will feature an all new, Mercedes-built 6.0 litre bi-turbo V12 with 700bhp. And by Pagani’s standards it’s going to be a mass-production job. Up to 40 C9s a year will be built. Which is double current level of production on the Zonda. But then the C9 will be a world car – in particular it will be street legal in the USA – so there is a bigger marketplace.

With the C9 getting ever closer it’s inevitable that testing will be getting to the end, and the picture you see above was taken in South Africa where the Pagani C9 has been hot-weather testing near the Kalahari. And it’s not the same car as we’ve seen before so it looks like Pagani has at least two mules on the go – 10% of annual production. Which is the equivalent Toyota having 900k test mules floating around for their next new car.

The rumour is that this C9 mule – complete with ‘Government approved high speed testing vehicle’ stickers – has topped out at 255mph in testing. Whether Pagani will want it to achieve that on the production car is debatable, but as it would just shade the Veyron it may be tempting.

We still don’t know what the C9 will be called or what it will look like (the mule is a C9 under the Zonda-like skin) but we’ll know in the next few months.

Start saving your pennies. If the C9 comes in around €900k as Horacio Pagani said that’s about the same in pounds when you include the VAT. So assuming the C9 will launch in September – let’s say 210 days – that’s about £4.3k a day.

Time to take a packed lunch to work?