Now, every week, either Richard or I,
drive a preposterously fast car around our track,
but when it came to making this week's film, there was a problem.
Neither of us was available.
I'd hurt my neck in the lorry crash
and Richard was busy selling fish at Morrison's.
Which meant for the first time ever, Captain Slow went out there.
God help us.
When I arrived, the track was enveloped in typical British autumnalness.
Right, here we go. Top Gear test track. My patch for the day.
Now, I've been very insistent with the office,
I don't want to find some look-at-me, two-door, Italian supercar
with a 250mph speedo and a £250,000 price tag or any of that sort of rubbish.
I want to drive something more like, well, to be honest, some... Some...
Oh, cock.
Surely not.
Well, since the choice is testing this or the Panda,
I suppose it had better be this, which is a Pagani Zonda.
And not just any old Zonda. That is the Zonda F Roadster.
And in the already insane world of Pagani, this one has its own special padded cell.
Regular car, 555 horsepower. This one, 650. Let's try it out.
This may be my first Zonda,
but it happens to be the fastest one we've ever tested.
The acceleration is so brutal!
I think my eyes have moved round the side of my head like a pigeon.
I think I know what to do at this point.
Power!
This car is made entirely out of improbable numbers.
0 to 60, 3.6 seconds. 0 to 120, under 10 seconds.
And then, when you hit the carbon ceramic brakes...
125mph to 0 in 4.4 seconds.
And my eyeballs are back in the correct position on the front of my face.
There is, though, one other number that dwarfs all of these,
and it's the F Roadster's price.
It's £825,000.
Top Gear, bringing you credit crunch news on the hour.
But we haven't just brought this along to show you some high-priced high perform.
You see, the F Roadster is the swansong for the current Zonda.
Next year, there'll be a brand-new one,
but the original will always be a bit special to us.
You know when we brought Top Gear back to the telly back in 2002,
the Zonda was the car we featured in the very first show.
And we liked it, but there was always that nagging feeling that,
"Here come another bunch of hopeless optimists
who think they know better than Ferrari.
Give them a year and they'll be down the dole office with all the rest of them."
But it hasn't happened.
Pagani is still very much here today, still getting up Ferrari's nose.
Now, Richard Hammond, who is 12,
thinks it's because Pagani has captured that sort of "mental market",
the small boy's bedroom wall poster that used to be a Lamborghini.
It's got ridiculous bodywork and ray guns probably,
and switches from the lunar-module.
And I think he's right. But there is something else.
It's actually a very, very good car.
See, the entire shell is made out of carbon fiber, naked carbon fiber.
Which makes you look a bit of an idiot, frankly,
but it does mean it's very strong.
So strong, in fact, that even when they've taken the roof off,
it remains perfectly rigid.
In fact, the construction's so clever that it hasn't gained any weight
in becoming a convertible, and that's a rare thing.
So, you see the Pagani engineers do know what they're doing.
Which means we've come to that point in the film
where I have to go fast round a corner to prove it.
Turn it in...
Can we cut that bit out?
With a bit of practice, though, I did get the hang of it.
Dab of brakes, turn in...
You see?
And I'm told... I mean, I can report,
that the F Roadster is pretty agile through the corners.
Now, the office say they have another car for me to try on the track,
but that I shouldn't worry because it's only a VW.
Funny.
The Bugatti Veyron, finally on our track, and I'm gonna put it straight to work.
I believe the done thing at this point is to have a drag race,
so if nobody objects, we'll have one. With these two.
Since I'd got my eye in with the Zonda, I took that.
The Veyron would be in the hands of The Stig, who wasn't here earlier.
On paper, this looks like a bit of a one-horse race
because the Veyron is a full second quicker than this car to 60.
2.5 seconds, 3.5 seconds.
But you never know, he might mess up the start.
He didn't. Crikey!
Despite weighing over half a ton more, the Veyron mullered the Zonda.
That is the power of power.
Now, I should really take that Veyron off Stiggy
and drive it around a few corners,
but unfortunately, that would get in the way of what you, me,
and, in fact, everybody else in the world really wants to see,
which is him taking it for a lap.
Oh, yes.
Well done, you.
I wasn't kidding there. I do actually mean it.
Later on in the show,
-after a wait of two years... -Two years. Yeah.
We're all gonna find out how fast the most powerful car in the world
goes round our track.
It is gonna be quite a moment. It's gonna be up here somewhere.
But we've already had quite a moment, you, for the first time, out there.
-How was it? -Smooth as silk.
It's a piece of cake.
Who here would like to see some of the out-takes of James...?
You would? Let's play the tape somewhere. Have a look.
Oh, dear, that Chicago has gone wrong.
Here we go again, gone wrong.
And here we go again, it's gone wrong.
Thank you.
He is useless. Useless. What?!
The problem is... It's my hair.
No, it is. Because when you go through a corner,
-it blows in my face. -Yeah.
But as soon as I put that white helmet on, I found everything was absolutely fine.
I think what it was, is that you stepped out of the Panda, into the Zonda,
which is like weaning a baby off breast milk and straight onto port.
I can't believe he got to drive that Zonda.
It is my all-time favorite supercar,
it's that mixture of sheer lunacy and engineering.
You could've driven it.
You were given the choice,
drive the Zonda or sell fish for a Northern supermarket.
You chose the fish.
You can't seriously prefer the Zonda to the Bugatti.
I do, because the Zonda's got some pantomime to it.
The Bugatti is too controlled, it's like sitting in a physics lesson.
-Were you watching that drag race? -Yes.
Did you see what the physics lesson did to your pantomime dame?
-Yes. -It annihilated it.
But if we could just listen for a moment, what's that I'm not hearing?
Anyone not hearing that as well?
Is anybody else not hearing the Zonda being taken round the track
by The Stig for a lap?
I wonder if it's got anything to do with what happened this morning
when it arrived? Here we go.
First corner, the very first corner, and what's that coming out of the back?
It looks a bit like smoke.
Smoke! Yes, yes, see? It's a proper supercar.
It didn't just come down to the track and go round like a robot and be boring.
It came to the track and exploded immediately.
That's what supercars do. It's proper!