For only the third time since 1999, there's a new Pagani. Not a new model variant either—an entirely new car. This is the Pagani Utopia, the successor to the Huayra, and notably, the car that brings the manual transmission back to the Italian hypercar company.

As with all Pagani models, the Utopia is based around a central monocoque—made of Pagani's unique carbon-fiber/titanium blend—with steel tubular subframes front and rear. Out back, there's an AMG V-12, a 6.0-liter twin-turbo making 864 hp and 811 lb-ft of torque, and behind that, a transversely mounted XTrac seven-speed gearbox. Buyers will have the choice of an automated 'box or a true manual, with a gated shift pattern and a dog-leg first gear. Back in 2019, Horacio Pagani told Road & Track that around 70 percent of his customers were asking for a manual. Given skyrocketing values of the manual-equipped Zonda, it's very apparent that a lot of customers don't want paddles. It's a contrast to the Huayra, which was only fit with a single-clutch automatic.
The engine is an evolution of the V-12 that debuted with the Huayra Roadster BC, itself a heavily modified version of the Mercedes M158 unit that debuted with...