Mr Hypercar: The man who turned every car he touched into gold 

Working for Lamborghini, Pagani, Koenigsegg, KTM and Dallara since 1974, Loris Bicocchi has a bigger ambition to do his own car at the age of 61.

And the man drives like this:

Sometimes, it's better to wait 

While Football is the most popular sport in Italy, it's not the most popular for Bicocchi. “I was never interested in football, just cars,” he says.

Bicocchi shared the hometown of Sant'Agata Bolognese with Lamborghini, in the north of Italy. He used to stand in front of the company gates waiting for cars to come out for hours. He was just 10 years old back then.

All the waiting is worthy when Bob Wallance, a test driver at the time, noticed Bicocchi was waiting outside and introduced him working in Lamborghini's warehouse. 

In 1974, he dropped out of college and took up the entry-level R&D role. After he became a test driver, he worked on the Countach and the Diablo before his former Lamboghini R&D boss started with Bugatti and invited him to join together.

Six years, 50-hour weeks and driving tens of thousands of kilometres, that's what Bicocchi has dedicated for Bugatti. He thought that would be forever for the rest of his life until the company’s collapse in 1995.

“I never cleared my desk,” he says while standing in the echoing emptiness of the R&D department. “I didn’t want to – I knew that would mean it was really over.”

Bicocchi did not give up on Bugatti even after the collpse. He continued to work with the Bugatti EB110, which then turned into limited production. Bicocchi was also responsible for looking after the car collection of the Sultan of Brunei, including the Porsche 962 and 37 Lamborginis.

Bicocchi joined Horacio Pagan, his former Lamborghini colleague, and mechanic Remo Pizzinardi to form the tiny team behind the first Zonda. “We were close friends and he said he wanted to make his own car.” 

The secret of a test driver

Meanwhile, he also received a drive task assignment with Koenigsegg after seeing the CC8S prototype at the Paris show in 2000. This was when Bicocchi really showed his philosophy as a test driver: to ensure the cars he worked on had completely distinct characters.

“The secret of a test driver is not to try to change the identity of a car,” he says. “You have to make it the best it can be, to make it safe and to make it exciting – not to give it your personality. A Koenigsegg should never be like a Pagani, a Pagani cannot be a Koenigsegg.”

“I won’t do projects that don’t appeal to me. I always think: can I help and is it interesting?” Bicocchi says, admitting that he recently turned down the chance to work on a future high-performance EV. “With hybrids, you can use electrification to make the car more dynamic,” he says, “but I am not a fan of pure electric cars. Maybe I am too old.”