Koenigsegg doesn’t do conventional
Speed records show doing things differently is working out for Swedish manufacturer Neil Vorano
Founder and CEO Christian von Koenigsegg unveils the Koenigsegg Agera RS, the fastest production car in the world, clocked recently going 457.94 km/h.
Christian von Koenigsegg is not your average car company executive, and even less your average car company owner.
But seeing as Koenigsegg — the low-volume supercar company based in Sweden — is not at all your average car company, well, it makes sense. You’d need to have a bit of unconventional behind you to start a car company at just 22 years of age back in 1994.
Koenigsegg — the man — is in Toronto for the Canadian International Auto Show to introduce his Agera RS, the same 1,360-horsepower car that set a host of speed records on a closed public road late last year in Nevada.
Sitting in front of the supercar for a chat, dressed casually in jeans and a dress shirt, the Swede laments the state of today’s car industry, which was part of the reason he started his company.
“I’m a car guy that is not so interested in most modern cars,” he says.
“I feel like when I was younger they were different than they are today. I would never have imagined that you can get a similar sensation in a Kia as you would a BMW; they are more similar than you could imagine. It’s kind of a streamlining. Everyone checks each other out and takes measurements and then creates a rule book on how to build cars, and everyone follows the same principle.”
Not Koenigsegg. His supercars sport myriad technical innovations, such as the Dihedral Synchrohelix Door Actuation System that flips doors on their ends, or integrating the fuel tank into the carbon-fibre passenger tub, or a unique Triplex suspension, among many other features.
“That was one of the strategies,” he says. “Why would anyone buy my car if it’s made the same as everything else? I felt it had to do things differently and be very interesting and efficient for it to have a reason to exist.”
Unlike many car companies, Koenigsegg doesn’t plan on entering the lucrative world of SUVs just yet.
“I’m not a fan of SUVs from a dynamic perspective. We’re doing sports cars, not everyday cars. I know there are sporty SUVs, but because they have a higher centre of gravity they’re not as dynamic.”
His Agera RS is certainly dynamic. The car set four speed records last fall, including the highest top speed for a production vehicle (447.19 km/h, based on an average speed of two runs), the fastest 0-400 km/h time (33.29 seconds), the fastest flying kilometre on a public road (445.63 km/h), the fastest flying mile on a public road (457.94 km/h) and the fastest speed reached on a public road (457.94 km/h ). Surprisingly,it was the owner of the car who instigated the test, not the company.
“We were just about finished building his car, and he said ‘I want to see how fast this goes.’ Well, we don’t have a track long enough to do that. I told him any test track is too short, you’d have to shut down a whole road. And he managed to do that.
“So when we heard he had achieved that, we thought we’d better help out, because it’s uncharted territory, and it’s dangerous. We’ve never even driven that fast, so we wanted to be part of it, analyze it, and make sure it was done as safely as possible and that we got as much data out of it as possible.”
The test went flawlessly, obviously, and apart from basking in the glory of building the fastest car on the planet, the company also gleaned valuable information from the tests.
“We got a lot of data. For example, now every Agera RS comes with an aerodynamic setup in the software for the ride height, for the wing, for the front flaps, for the shock absorbers, that is optimal for that high speed, because we could never get to that speed. And we developed that while we were there. And while we have done testing of the wheels and tires earlier, we now know that at this high speed they’re fine.
“We also now know where the limits are. On one of the rounds we hit the rev limiter, so now if we want to go faster we need to raise the rev limiter. But it all showed that car does what it’s supposed to do, and our simulations were correct.”
Perhaps surprisingly, one of Koenigsegg’s daily drivers is a Tesla Model S. The Koenigsegg Regera is a hybrid supercar, but he’s so impressed with the Tesla that making a full-on EV for his company is a definite possibility. Just not now.
“Going fully electric? Yeah, maybe eventually. But only if it’s more efficient; right now we can make a much lighter hybrid than a pure electric, and we get the sound! But eventually batteries will become lighter and more efficient, so most likely eventually electric cars — compared with its weight — will become much more efficient. But that’s maybe five or 10 years away.
“For normal cars, they’re already viable, because if a normal car is 200 kilos heavier it doesn’t really matter too much, you don’t notice the weight. But in a sports car it matters. So I think the normal car will get there sooner.”
His visit to Toronto isn’t a holiday; Koenigsegg has made the move into Canada with new partnerships. Though the company has a low volume of production — it built just 25 Agera RSs and 80 Regeras last year — and has a four-year waiting list for its cars, it is enjoying a 30 per cent growth rate and is eyeing different markets.
“It’s not that we had a strategy, ‘Now we’re entering Canada,’ but it’s that we found very interesting persons to work with on the dealership side, and interesting customers. It’s more that there are people here that we can work with.
“We have a dealer with dealerships in Vancouver and Calgary (Weissach Performance). But they also have mobile technicians to collect cars for service, so they have a good reach.
“But, of course, Canada is a big country, so eventually we might need more locations.”