Pagani Huayra Codalunga: The Long Tail

“Codalunga” means Long Tail in Italian — coda (tail) lunga (long). It is a term borrowed from motorsport, specifically from the era of Le Mans prototype racing in the late 1960s when manufacturers like Porsche, Ferrari, and Ford experimented with elongated rear bodywork designed to reduce aerodynamic drag at very high speeds. Cars like the Porsche 917 LH (LH for Langheck, German for long tail), the Ferrari 512 S Berlinetta, and the Ford GT40 Mark IV were the original long-tail machines. The Pagani Huayra Codalunga is a love letter to all of them.

Created by Pagani’s “Grandi Complicazioni” (Grand Complications) division — a name borrowed from the watchmaking world, where a complication is any function beyond simple timekeeping — the Codalunga was commissioned by two clients who shared a passion for 1960s endurance racing. They wanted a streamlined version of the Huayra, something that referenced the Le Mans silhouette racers of the classic era while using the most advanced materials and engineering available in the early 2020s. Horacio Pagani and his team responded with what many consider the most beautiful car of the decade.

Only 5 units were built. All were sold before the public saw the car.

The Genesis: Two Clients, One Vision

The Codalunga’s origins lie in a private conversation between Pagani and two of the brand’s most devoted collectors. These clients — whose identities have been kept private — approached the Grandi Complicazioni team with a very specific brief: they wanted a Huayra-based car inspired by the long-tail prototype racers of the 1960s, particularly the Porsche 917 LH and the Ferrari P-series cars. They wanted simplicity where the standard Huayra has complexity, and visual purity where it has drama.

This brief was challenging, because the standard Huayra is already a masterpiece of aerodynamic complexity. It features four active aerodynamic flaps — two at the front, two at the rear — that move independently to balance downforce and reduce drag depending on driving conditions. It has grilles, vents, intakes, and apertures covering almost every surface. Removing all of this and replacing it with clean, flowing aluminum bodywork required not just styling work but a complete rethinking of the car’s aerodynamic management.

Pagani’s engineering team spent over two years developing the Codalunga. Wind tunnel testing, computational fluid dynamics analysis, and iterative clay modelling all contributed to the final shape. The result retains the Huayra’s fundamental proportions — low hood, wide haunches, central cockpit — while transforming its visual character entirely.

Design: Removing the Mesh

The standard Huayra has lots of grilles and vents. The Codalunga removes them.

The Rear: The most radical change is at the back. The engine cover extends 360mm longer than the standard car — this is the “long tail” in literal terms. This extended tail serves the same aerodynamic purpose as on the 1960s Le Mans prototypes: it smooths the airflow as it leaves the rear of the car, reducing the turbulent wake and therefore reducing aerodynamic drag. At high speed, this translates to a higher top speed for the same engine power.

The rear bodywork is a single, continuous piece that flows from the roof of the cabin down over the engine and out to a truncated Kamm tail — a blunt, vertical cut-off that triggers a clean separation of airflow rather than allowing it to become turbulent. This design, developed by German aerodynamicist Wunibald Kamm in the 1930s and adopted by virtually every racing car since, combines the low drag of a smooth tapering body with the practical length limitations of a road car.

The Exhaust: The iconic quad-exhaust pipes emerge from the rear of the car exposed, with no grille or covering over the ceramic-coated Inconel headers. These four pipes, each polished to a mirror finish, are a sculpture in their own right. They weigh just 4.4 kg — a figure that reflects the obsessive weight reduction applied to every component of the car.

The Nose: The front of the Codalunga is lower and more streamlined than the standard Huayra. The splitter is integrated seamlessly into the bodywork rather than appearing as a bolt-on addition. The headlights are smaller and more recessed.

Paint: All launch cars were painted in matte or satin finishes to highlight the curvature of the aluminum bodywork. Glossy paint flattens the visual impact of complex forms; matte and satin finishes reveal every subtle curve and surface transition.

The Engine: Huayra Imola Specification

The Codalunga uses the uprated V12 from the Huayra Imola — the most powerful version of the Mercedes-AMG sourced 6.0-liter twin-turbo V12 that has powered Pagani’s road cars since the Huayra’s introduction in 2011.

• Power: 840 hp — an increase over the standard Huayra’s 720 hp.
• Torque: 1,100 Nm of torque, available from low in the rev range thanks to the twin turbochargers.
• Transmission: A seven-speed automated sequential gearbox drives the rear wheels. The Codalunga, unlike some Pagani customers’ requests, does not offer a manual option — the shift speeds of the automated gearbox are simply better suited to the car’s performance intent.
• 0–100 km/h: 2.8 seconds.
• Top speed: 370 km/h — faster than the standard Huayra, thanks partly to the aerodynamic efficiency of the long-tail body.

The engine sits amidships, mounted longitudinally ahead of the rear axle, with the dry-sump lubrication system allowing it to be positioned low in the chassis for optimal center of gravity. Six individual throttle bodies sit atop the V12, visible through the glass engine cover.

Materials: The Pagani Obsession

No discussion of a Pagani is complete without dwelling on the materials, because the Codalunga — like every Pagani — is defined by the obsessive quality of its construction.

Carbo-Titanium: The chassis and primary structural components use Pagani’s patented Carbo-Titanium composite — carbon fiber woven with titanium wire, creating a material that maintains the extreme stiffness and lightness of carbon fiber while adding the ductility of titanium. Where ordinary carbon fiber shatters on impact, Carbo-Titanium deforms progressively, absorbing energy. This has real safety implications as well as structural ones.

Bodywork: The outer panels are formed from Carbo-Triax — another Pagani material, a three-directional carbon fiber weave that creates surfaces of exceptional stiffness and visual quality. The weave is visible in unpainted areas, adding to the car’s visual richness.

Interior: The cabin of the Codalunga is the most restrained Pagani interior in recent memory — deliberately so. The clients wanted something that referenced the simplicity of a 1960s Le Mans prototype cockpit. Two deeply bolstered seats in leather and Alcantara. A minimal dashboard with analog gauges set in machined aluminum bezels. A steering wheel with carbon fiber spokes. Toggles and switches machined from billet aluminum. The effect is of a racing car that has been carefully domesticated — powerful and purposeful, but not aggressive.

Value, Exclusivity, and Significance

The price of each Codalunga was €7 million — a figure that placed it above the standard Huayra Roadster BC (around €2.8 million) but below the Zonda Riviera or the most extreme one-off commissions. Given that only five were built, the total commercial value of the entire Codalunga production run was approximately €35 million — a remarkable number for what is essentially a bespoke coachbuilding exercise.

All five were allocated before the car’s public debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2022, where it appeared alongside the Le Mans prototype cars that had inspired it. The clients are serious Pagani collectors with deep ties to the brand — not speculators buying for immediate resale but enthusiasts commissioning a car they intend to drive and keep.

The Codalunga and the Art of Coachbuilding

The Huayra Codalunga represents the most sophisticated expression of the modern coachbuilding revival — a trend that gained momentum in the early 2010s and accelerated through the 2020s as wealthy collectors sought alternatives to conventional limited editions.

Traditional coachbuilding — the practice of commissioning bespoke bodywork on a standard mechanical platform — was the dominant model of automotive production until the late 1950s, when mass production made standardized bodies economically irresistible. Companies like Touring, Vignale, Ghia, and Scaglietti built individual or small-series bodies on Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, and Mercedes chassis to the specific requirements of individual clients.

Pagani’s Grandi Complicazioni division revives this tradition at the highest level of contemporary engineering. The Codalunga is not merely a restyled Huayra. It is a fundamental rethinking of the car’s aerodynamic architecture, realized in materials and to tolerances that exceed anything available to the coachbuilders of the 1950s and 1960s.

In that sense, the Codalunga connects two eras of automotive art: the golden age of Italian coachbuilding and the contemporary era of hypercar engineering. It is a bridge between the Pininfarina Berlinetta Aerodinamica Tecnica studies of the 1960s and the carbon-fiber masterworks of the 2020s — and in the judgment of many observers, it is the most beautiful car Pagani has ever built.