Koenig…what? It might be a handful to spell and pronounce, but unlike its complicated name, the Koenigsegg Agera RS finds no difficulty in accelerating all the way to speeds as high as 446.97 km/h (277.87 mph) on a public road near Pahrump Nevada, which is in America. Being almost 16 km/h faster than the “top speed king”, the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport (which held the wold record for highest top speed since 2010 at 431 km/h or 286 mph), this means that the Agera RS is now the fastest production car in the world. For one to claim this title, they have to do a set of runs in two opposite directions (to factor out the effects of wind) and an average between the two runs is measured. In the case of the Agera, it hit 457.49 km/h (284.55 mph) on the first run and then went on to do 436.44 km/h (271.19 mph) in the opposite direction. When you average out the two figures, well let’s just say the rest is history. Afterwards, it went on to try to better its own record from accelerating from 0 to 400 km/h and then back to 0 – they had broken the Bugatti Chiron’s record (41.69 seconds) a few weeks before, albeit in less than optimal conditions (36.44 seconds) so naturally they wanted to try again and they succeeded with a time of 33.29 seconds – let’s just say November hasn’t been a good month for Bugatti’s PR team.
A difference of 16 km/h may not sound like a lot, but the problem with travelling at those kind of speeds is that the air gets noticeably thicker (try sticking your hand out of the window of a moving car and you’ll see how). So essentially, to go a little bit faster, you need a whole lot more power to achieve such because while air is as fluid as water at 0 km/h, it becomes as viscous as a thick sauce when you reach speeds of around 400 km/h. To conquer physics, the Agera RS comes armed with a super sophisticated 5.0 litre twin-turbocharged V8 bomb that produces a scarcely believable 865 kW and 1280 N.m. Apparently, there is an optional package called the ‘1 MegaWatt’ which augments the already imposing power figure to 1 000 kW – and that is the power of power! The Agera RS also features a genius aerodynamic package – a Le Mans inspired active rear wing and active independent front flaps, both which aid in achieving maximum downforce. In the case of a top speed run, these active aerodynamic devices will be adapted to reduce the downforce so the car can reach higher top speeds. Thanks to the extensive use of carbon fibre (carbon fibre chassis, carbon fibre wheels, carbon fibre air intake, carbon fibre this, carbon fibre that) the Agera RS wieghs in at just 1396 kg, which is near anorexic for a car with heavy turbocharging and a 4293 mm and 2050 mm length and width respectively.
Price tag? Well, being limited to 25 units worldwide, the price tag was bound to be sky high anyways – exclusivity always comes at a price. Nobody knows exactly how much the Agera RS costs (apart, of course, from the 25 people who bought it), but seeing that its “tamer” sibling, the Agera R, is set at $1.7 million (R24.2 million), we can estimate the Agera RS to at least being $2 million (R28.5 million) – you couldn’t afford this car even if NSFAS gave you the money accidentally. But unlike your Golf GTI, the Agera RS is more expensive second hand than when brand new since these kind of rare cars increase in value – one man sold his Koenigsegg for $5 million (R71.2 million) in Singapore in 2013. Yeah, I think you get the point now.
Now that you know what this car is, watch it blitz the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport’s world record for top speed and the Bugatti Chiron’s world record for 0-400 km/h-0:
