The Most Useless Car Comparo

Words: Charlie Austin

The Ferrari FXX and the Pagani Zonda R. Why on earth might you say is this the most useless car comparison? Well, several reasons. Take the Ferrari FXX; a 789 horsepower Enzo with four tail pipes - might as well call them afterburners - the size of a fiat 500's wheels replacing the civilian taillights. All is well until you call up Maranello to buy one. Only 29 pre-selected Ferrari owners were asked to pay the $1.8 million dollar price tag for the FXX. Steep, yes, but for a car with a shift time of under 100 milliseconds and brake pads that catch on fire easier than the 458, it's reasonable, in a way. Once again all is well, until you look in your garage. Er, wait a second, where is my 7 figure super car i bought last week? Well, that is Ferrari's job. For the price of $1,800,000, you get to drive "your" FXX a couple laps at Ferrari approved track days until Ferrari decides to steal their mutant Enzo back. I suppose the FXX is too much of a handful for us mortals to look at for more than a couple of minutes.

Then you have the Zonda R, Pagani's deranged, idiotic, track ready hyper car. I guess you could say it's based off the Zonda, sort of. Powered by a 740 hp AMG V12 - the same one used in the CLK-GTR - the Zonda R - R for ridiculous, raging, rabid? - sprints to 100 kmh in 2.8 seconds. Like the FXX however, all sort of goes awry when you call up Modena - right down the street from Maranello. When you call to order the Zonda R for yes, $1.8 million you will encounter a bit of a problem. Yes, it actually can make a home in your garage without Pagani stealing it; however, you might have difficulty deciding what to do with it. See, the R has no indicators and the ride height is so outlandishly low it's hard to drive over a sheet of paper, making it illegal for civilian roads. Ok, so you can't drive to the local pub in it, but at least you can run it through its paces at the local track, not quite. The R's enormous, flame throwing, quad exhaust is so deafening, it actually violates the noise limits at a majority of race tracks. So what to do with the mad Zonda R?

When you put the FXX and the Zonda R next to each other there is one thing that clearly stands apart. They both cost a pricey $1.8 million, they both have over 700 hp, they both have no home on any form of tarmac lining all seven continents, and they both are outlandishly quick. There is one thing however that you can't help to notice about the two cars. The thing is, when the two are next to each other, you start to think that maybe the FXX looks a little sane. The Zonda R is so psychotic that the FXX's red paint starts to fade away into the background with every other Ferrari. The R is just plain rebellious, it's untouched carbon fiber, the tach on the steering wheel, the vintage airplane style switches on the center console; heck, it has more fins, gills, and holes than a shark. It's stance simply looks as if it is going the Ferrari's top speed standing still. In a category which is the home of the two most radical cars in the world, the psychopath comes out on top, and there's just no arguing, the Zonda R is the fastest, craziest hyper car there is, in the world, bar none. So i guess it goes to reason, $1.8 million is the going price for the most revolutionary paper weight in the world.