Didn’t take long.
It’s almost certain that the reason why Koenigsegg went after this simultaneous acceleration and braking run at all was because Bugatti went ahead and published the figure for their 0-400-0km/h run achieved in their new Chiron: 41.96 seconds - claiming it to be a new world record. Bad move.
That is mightily impressive stuff, of course, as we know the French-German hypercar is capable of achieving an insane top speed and eyebrow-scorching acceleration to get there. But it was witnessing its capacity for braking that had more of us curious as we’d imagine even the freshest and most chemically advanced carbon ceramic brakes would have their hands full when pulling a full stop at that pace - it still weighs 2-tonnes, after all.
Ironically, more of a stir was caused by the unseen camera chase car used in the straight line run to film said Chiron, with some fierce debates being sparked online as to what exactly was used. Some theories argued that it was a mega-fast Toyota Supra or an Audi RS6 tuned to the brink of disintegration. Later, Bugatti admitted it to being the obvious answer: another Chiron.
Enter the Agera RS, a car that has just about as much power as the Chiron’s 1120kW/1600Nm 8.0-litre quad-turbocharged W16 powerplant at 1,014kW/1,371Nm, derived from a twin-turbo 5.0-litre V8, but crucially weighs a whole lot less. At 1,395kg, the Swede has a near -600kg advantage in an arena where power-to-weight reigns supreme, edging out sheer power.
With that in mind, founder Christian von Koenigsegg and crew took the car to the Vandel airfield in neighbouring Denmark on October 1st and recorded a time of 36.44 seconds, beating the Chiron by 5.52 seconds. In that span, the Agera RS covered a total of 2,441m on the move where it spent 1,958m (or 26.88 seconds) in hard acceleration to the 400km/h mark (topping at 403km/h), immediately followed by 483m (or 9.56 seconds) where the driver, factory wheelman Niklas Lilja, presumably spent standing on the brake pedal.
Just how much more the Agera RS would have kept accelerating is unclear as its top speed hasn’t been released. Though, now we can confidently say its well north of 400km/h. In fact, despite beating the Chiron’s own world record, Koenigsegg has refrained from claiming it as such or even directly referring to Bugatti at all. That restraint must be Swedish thing.
Instead, Mr. Koenigsegg said: “It makes me so proud, so happy and excited to see what we have achieved as a team with the Agera RS. A result like this does not just happen. It may have only taken a few hours of driving to complete this run, but we cannot overlook all of the work that went into creating the car in the first place […] The story of David and Goliath continues to resonate.”
That last sentence is the only point in their statement that can be interpreted to be in reference to their well-funded, Volkswagen-owned opponent. It was also hinted at they would return to beat this 36.44s run with the Regera, a more powerful hybrid hypercar that’s also the company’s newest model.
