Million-dollar Italian supercar barred by U.S. safety regulator

If you were hoping to see one of these on your street any time soon, don't hold your breath.

Built from carbon-titanium, the Pagani Huayra weighs around 3,000 pounds and can go from zero to 60 miles per hour in 3.5 seconds. Italian automaker Pagani planned to bring its 700 horsepower, $1 million supercar to the U.S. later this year. In fact, the company had even begun preparing unveiling ceremonies for its U.S. launch.

But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration denied its request for an exemption from safety laws that require "advanced" child-safe airbags -- ones that can sense when a child is in the car and alter the airbag deployment force accordingly, avoiding injury to small children.

Pagani requested the exemption on the grounds that complying with the regulation would have caused "substantial economic hardship." The NHTSA argued that the automaker failed to demonstrate why it would pose such a financial hardship, arguing also that the company had not demonstrated a serious effort to adhere to the regulation.

The initial U.S. rollout would have been slow - the company expected to sell 5 cars in the U.S. in 2012. Pagani, a company that employs only 60 people, builds most of its cars by hand.

The automaker maintains that it has not abandoned plans to sell the Huayra in the U.S. The company expects it to enter the market by 2013, as engineers work to incorporate the advanced airbag system into the car.

Photos: Pagani

via [CNN Money]

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com