With sprayed-on designer jeans, featherweight black driving shoes, a black T-shirt, and a chunky Panerai watch on his left wrist, Andrea Palma looks like the Italian test driver from central casting. “Ready?” he says and punches the gas. The open-top Pagani launches like an F/A-18 off an aircraft carrier, the keening howl of the big V-12 at our shoulders accompanied by whooshes and whistles from the turbochargers. Noise, thrust, speed: sensory overload wrapped in hand-crafted carbon fiber, leather, and titanium. Meet the Pagani Huayra Roadster BC.

Quicker and more agile, with a new engine, a new aero package, revised suspension, and a new carbon-fiber chassis, the Huayra Roadster BC is the Pagani that was never meant to be. After the Huayra Roadster launched at the 2017 Geneva Motor Show, Horacio Pagani was expecting to turn his attention toward the design and development of the C10, the replacement for the Huayra. But as he traveled back to Modena with five completely unsolicited deposits for a BC version of the Roadster, he thought: “Maybe we ought to build one.”