Reader Spy: Next Pagani C9 supercar caught truckin' in South Africa

Looks like the dyke's about to burst on the new Pagani C9, Horacio Pagani's cat-out-of-the-bag replacement for the legendary Zonda. Long story short, the Zonda is over ten years-old. The new C9 will be lighter, faster and sport better dynamics. Powering the new hypercar is a special, developed just for Pagani version of AMG's lovable 6.0-liter twin-turbo V12. In C9 trim this motor should belt out 700 horsepower. Yowza. Plus, it halfway looks like Michael Keaton's Batmobile.

A South African reader of ours caught the C9 mule in South Africa, snapped some pictures for your consumption and had the following to say:

I was driving from the OR Thambo International Airport (used to be called Johannesburg Intl) back home. This car carrier was standing next to the road, unattended. I don't know if you know, but a lot of high speed testing gets done in South Africa. One of our provinces (the Northern Cape) has parts that is part of the Kalahari desert with deserted straight blacktop for hundreds of kilometres on end. You get permission from the government (hence the yellow stickers) to drive as much as you'd like on the roads. The Porsche Panamera did round about 1600km in the Northern Cape last year. These pics were taken 14 February 2010.

Sounds fantastic to us, and should help shape the new breed of hyper exotics along with the McLaren MP4-12C. Thanks to MJ van Niekerk for the pics!