It’s been nearly a couple of decades since we’ve started complaining about how safety standards are a big problem in the life of cars, particularly sports ones but it’s only today that a first serious victim appears.
Pagani’s latest supercar the pronunciation challenging Huayra failed the infamous NHTSA approval that every car needs in order to be sold in America.
As a result of the event, none of the fifteen orders Americans have placed for the Pagani Huayra will be completed very soon, or at all.
The test in case was developed by the NHTSA way back in 2000 and it introduced new guidelines for advanced air bags and their placement.
Failing any of these would normally put you out of the U.S. market but some concessions have been made in the past. This occurred with low volume manufacturers.
Prime examples for the exemption are the Italians at Lamborghini and the Americans at Tesla. With this precedent set, Pagani have got to go through the effort of extensive paperwork in order to obtain the same sort of status for the Huayra.
If the Italians don’t manage to obtain these special papers they will have only two options and none of them will see any of the American customers happy.
This is because Pagani will either have to go back to the drawing board and their engineers will no longer be working towards developing new high performance engines and, in return, they’ll be redesigning the airbag system.
Advanced airbags is an accepted term used by the NHTSA to determine a special sort of airbags. In reality, the airbags themselves will have nothing special, but the sensors that operate them do this.
You see, U.S. safety standards claim that car airbags nowadays need to have special sensors that will control the airbag’s detonation depending on the weight and height of the passenger they’re supposed to protect.
Pagani’s system remains virtually unchanged since they brought out the original Zonda nearly 10 years ago. Updating it will cost around 5.7 million dollars and spreading that sort of money over the limited orders they get in the United States is going to be quite the racket.
As a result of this, there’s going to be a 2 million dollar price tag associated to the U.S. spec Pagani Huayra or there’s going to be no price at all associated with it.
That’s right folks, there’s a good chance that the first Pagani supercar product for a decade may end up never happening.
