Carbotanium. The Zonda R's heritage.

Why are we inventing more and more new materials? One of the main engineers’ tasks is to get the best possible effects with the given budget. But what if it is no borders? I think that is the structural engineer’s wet dream: when your boss comes in and say “Guys, there are things more important than money in this world. Please, help me make the best car ever”.

The history of Pagani always fascinated me. It was founded by a man, who didn’t have a word “compromise” in his dictionary. Horacio Pagani always wanted to make things his way. Not to prove something. Just to make a little boy’s dream come true.

Special cars need to be made in a special way. And yes, titanium and carbon fibre are great materials. And if the cars mentioned below would be made of one of these, I’m sure that the final effect would still be groundbreaking.
But someone thought once, what will happen, if these two will be joined together?

In simple words, producing something from composites is a good idea. The properties of two materials joined together outrun the figures belonging to a single material. So carbotanium delivers the advantages of titanium an carbon fibre: it’s very light, strong, stiff and have great fatigue properties.

Unfortunately, there is a catch. As I’ve written before, titanium’s production process is very complicated, so the price of the final metal is very high. What’s more, to make carbotanium, platinum is needed, which is another highly-expensive material. I’m sure, that if these two will by cheaper, the production of Ti-C composites would significantly grow.

Let’s look, how it’s made:

• Firstly, titanium has to be abraded to make its bonding possible;
• Next, the material is coated with platinum. Here we have a problem: platinum is an extremely rare material, with annual world production of only about 200 tonnes. This makes it very expensive. Due to its chemical properties, the metal is used in catalytic converters;
• Then the Titanium is aged. That means putting it in 500 degrees Celsius for several hours;
• The coated titanium is sprayed with primer;
• An adhesive is applied to the side treated with primer;
• Finally, carbon is applied to the adhesive.

Speaking of usage: it was firstly used in the Zonda R. And I think that’s an interesting move. They have applied an innovative material with great properties to a car, which isn’t even street legal. But this proves one point: Pagani’s cars aren’t made to look cool in front of the club at Saturday night. They are made to be simply the best.

Fortunately, the Huayra was born, so engineers had an opportunity to use it once again.

There are some cars, which I’ll park in my living room and stare into, instead of watching TV. Huayra is one of those. Just look at these mirrors:

There are some disputes: isn’t 700+ horsepower too much? Isn’t $1,5M price tag too much? Honestly, I don’t care. If I’ll ever have an opportunity to spend money on this carbotanium – built jaw-dropping monster, be sure I’ll do.