IED Students and Pagani Automobili Collaborate to Celebrate 25 Years of Zonda With Alisea

Let's be honest first. This is a 1:1 scale prototype, but it's probably never going to hit the streets. Still, it looks like it's begging to be built and enjoyed on a zippy track or while cruising along a coastal region. This is, as most of the times when designers from Italy or under Italian guidance, a gorgeous one-off.

It all started with Pagani Automobili S.p.A., an Italian manufacturer of hypercars and carbon fiber components, founded in 1992 by Horacio Pagani, an Argentine-Italian entrepreneur, businessman, and automotive industry engineer. His goal for the company he created and located in San Cesario sul Panaro, near Modena, Italy, was to allow Pagani to design and engineer his own car – initially dubbed Fangio F1 to honor Horacio's friend Juan Manuel Fangio, who is also an Argentine five-time Formula One champion.

However, he died in 1995 before the completion of the first series model, and Pagani renamed it Zona C12, which was equipped with V12 engines from Mercedes-Benz. In 1999, the supercar was presented at the Geneva Motor Show, and the rest of the Zonda line – C, S, F, R, Cinque, Tricolore, Roadster, Roadster F, Revolucion, HP Barchetta, plus all the bespoke units – is history.

Now, to honor the model's 25th anniversary, Pagani Automobili collaborated with IED and its master students to envision a potential continuation of the iconic two-seater designed by Horacio Pagani a quarter of a century ago. According to the companies, the Alisea hypercar concept car is a mix of classic Zonda elements with modern touches and sporty details that pay tribute to Pagani's sports car heritage. While it's hard to believe that the first Zonda came out 25 years ago, the feeling is exaggerated by the fact that Pagani worked on them for most of the intertwining time, and for sure, this epic supercar falls right in line with all the other real Zondas without anyone batting an eyelash at its lineage.

The clean design penned by the 24 students who gathered at IED from all over the world (from Italy to India and from China to Australia or Ecuador) was coordinated by Michele Albera, who ran the Master Course in Transportation Design alongside the Thesis Project overseer Masato Inoue. However, it wasn't just Pagani and IED that worked for the creation of the 1:1 scale prototype. Instead, the technical sponsors were Pirelli, OZ Racing, Lechler, and the Alisea was created by Freeland.car, MINTT, AM Costruzione Modelli, Raitec, and Italian Wrap Design.

Sadly, this one-off affair isn't earmarked for production by Pagani alongside recent models like Huayra or Utopia, so there are no technical details attached to it. However, we bet that an affluent customer could easily fall in love with it and ask Pagani for a bespoke version – we have seen the exotic automaker make countless Zonda specials over the years, and this shouldn't pose a problem for an obscene paycheck, of course. Until then, we can only dream…