Something strange is going on at Pagani Automobili. This is an outfit about the size of a Jiffy Lube, doing business on the Via dell'Artigianato—"the street of artisanal craftsmanship," if I parse it right—in Modena, the heart of Italian supercar country. In my two days at atelier Pagani, I did not see 20 souls. There's Luca, the press guy; a couple of receptionists; a few workers here, a couple of sons there; and Mrs. Pagani, who clicks across the polished floors in Milanese death heels. Where the hell is everybody?

Everybody else turns out to be one guy, Horacio Pagani, a mild, 56-year-old Argentine designer, carbon composites expert and savant of some kind, though I'm at a loss to say which kind. In fact, I would like to discuss Mr. Pagani's case with a clinical neuroscientist. Here is a man who, without benefit of formal education in aerodynamics or engineering—a European businessman who doesn't speak English, a designer who can't tell you what a PDF is—has managed to pluck from the naked air of his intellect this thing called the Pagani Huayra, a gull-winged, $1.2 million hypercar, a painterly masterpiece with comic book performance, a zero-altitude fighter jet and about the most radical way to get from Point A to 225 mph I've ever driven...