Koenigsegg is a Swedish car company that sets records about as often as you eat meals. Their mission statement? Make titanic hypercars that leave everyone else in the dust.
The debut of the Agera RS in late 2017 marked the beginning of a whole slew of firsts for production cars. It set the record for top speed at 457.94 km/h (284.55 mph), and obliterated Bugatti’s 0 - 400 - 0 km/h time of 42 seconds by almost 6 seconds. They then proceeded to top themselves and beat their own time by an additional 3 seconds.
Recently, the company took their hybrid model, the Regera, to a military airfield in Sweden to try and break the record again. The Regera only has one gear, which isn’t ideal in the top speed department, but the car wasn’t built for that. The philosophy behind it is “Whoever gets to 400 the fastest wins.”
The Regera. Photo taken from Architecturaldigest.com.
The priority with the Regera was acceleration and drivability, according to Koenigsegg. Because of this, the car reaches its top speed extremely rapidly by street-legal car standards, and seems like the ideal candidate for this record.
However, the location chosen for the attempt did come with a few drawbacks. The airfield’s runway isn’t used very frequently, and so the surface didn’t possess a lot of traction. Also, there were a few bumps that the car had to avoid, making this a less than ideal place for record setting.
They remained persistent, though, and went on to accelerate to 400 km/h in only 22.87 seconds and braked back to 0 in 8.62. This totals to a staggering 31.49, beating the Agera’s record again.
This alone is an amazing achievement, but the fact that they did this over challenging terrain makes it all the more impressive, and implies that over more even ground, this best time may be broken once more.
As amazing as all this is, they won’t hold the top speed record set by the Agera RS for much longer, as Bugatti is putting into production a modified version of their Chiron which has been tested to hit 490.48 km/h (304.77 mph). It remains to be seen whether Koenigsegg can top that speed with their replacement for the Agera releasing soon, the Jesko.
As for what Koenigsegg thinks of that dilemma, “Hold my beer,” they say at the end of their newest record’s official video.
Come back next week for more news from the world of cars.
-Daniel Shah
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