The XXII International “Barsanti and Matteucci” Prize, a prestigious award established by the City of Pietrasanta (Lucca) with the Rotary Club of Viareggio Versilia and the sponsorship of the Region of Tuscany, the Province of Lucca and the University of Pisa, has been awarded to the Italian-Argentinean designer Horacio Pagani, founder and owner of the Modena-based Pagani Automobili company, to commemorate his illustrious fellow citizen, Father Eugenio Barsanti, who conceived the first prototype internal combustion engine together with engineer Felice Matteucci.
Pagani has devoted much of his life to the search for materials, performance and lines sculpted by the wind: as soon as he was 12, he dreamed of Modena and the possibility of “designing and building my own cars”; in ’83, the landing at Lamborghini as a third-level worker, eventually leading a team that developed the world’s first car made entirely of composite materials, laying the groundwork for all future applications of carbon fiber in the automotive industry.
