This article was taken from the June 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Koenigsegg believes it has created the fastest production car in the world -- again. If the prototype One:1 reaches its computer-simulated top speed of 439kph in track tests this summer, the company will regain -- by an impressive 24kph -- the title it lost in 2005 to the Bugatti Veyron.
The headquarters of supercar manufacturer Koenigsegg Automotive AB is in a former air force base on an industrial park in
Ängelholm, southern Sweden. A decommissioned F-10 fighter jet perches on a plinth at the entrance and there's a flight museum next door. The proximity to these aeronautical symbols serves Koenigsegg well: the company permanently rents one of the two 1,400-metre former runways so that it can perform the intense acceleration and braking tests on the vehicles it manufactures. "We can do zero to 320kph and then back to zero and still have room left over," says production manager Manuel Berglund. "The locals were used to the ground shaking from the jets, and then it went quiet for a while. Then we came here."
Koenigsegg has around 25 per cent of the market for hypercars -- limited-edition, handbuilt vehicles that cost in excess of £600,000. Yet it is engaged in a battle for supremacy with main rivals Pagani Automobili and Bugatti Automobiles.
The firm was founded in 1994 by the then 22-year-old Christian von Koenigsegg, who at the age of five became fixated with a Norwegian animated film, Flåklypa Grand Prix, in which a bicycle repairman makes a racing car. This movie ignited a dream that one day he would create his own. The first prototype, a carbon-fibre model named CC was unveiled in 1996; but it wasn't until 2002 that the first Koenigsegg customer took delivery of a red CC8S at the Geneva Motor Show. Since then the company has produced 12 to 20 cars annually and has brought a new model to market every year or two -- many of them breaking records for their speed.
The most significant of these was achieved in February 2005 in Nardò in Italy, when the Koenigsegg CCR broke the Guinness record for the fastest production car in the world, reaching 388.87kph and beating the speed held by the McLaren F1.
The accolade stood until September that year, when the Bugatti Veyron hit 408.47kph. Now, having had this taste of automotive superstardom, von Koenigsegg wants it again -- with his latest design, the One:1.
The One:1 is a mid-engined version of Koenigsegg's 2011 Agera R.
Only seven will be built and all have already been pre-sold for £1.7 million each. The name came from Koenigsegg's aim to match the car's power-to-weight ratio. "We played safe," says Jon Gunner, the company's technical director. "We had more power than we needed and backed off to match the weight [1,360kg]. It turned out to be the first megawatt car -- 1,360hp is one megawatt." It's 1,014kW at 7,500rpm, to be precise -- which propels the car from zero to 400kph in 20 seconds. "As you get up into high speeds the car's requirements become different. It effectively becomes two cars," Gunner says. "With the Agera we pushed as far as we could to combine track needs with speed, but it had its limitations. We had a rethink with the One:1.
We wanted the best of both."
To create this hybrid, Gunner found the solution in dynamic surfaces: panels that change shape as the car requires. The One:1 can also download telemetry from the cloud as it travels to set up the vehicle on the fly.
So if you approach the Nürburgring racetrack in Germany, for example, the car will automatically download settings for that track. "The car alters its setup constantly," says Gunner. "Once the controller identifies it is on the track there will be a co-ordination handshake between the cloud, the car and the GPS.
Then we use the wheel and speed sensors to identify positioning on the track. From here we will have set up each corner with the correct settings for the car."
Ride height, spring stiffness, suspension clicks, the rear dynamic wing and the front dynamic aeroflaps will all be remotely controlled. And the car itself will override these settings taking into account g-forces and breaking events to give the optimal set-up for whatever situation the One:1 is in.
Koenigsegg manufactures 95 per cent of each car from scratch to achieve optimised performance from every component. With this level of forensic fabrication, surely the company could, if commissioned by an obsessive patron, make a Koenigsegg boat or plane? "Oh, I think so, yes," Gunner says. "In fact, that has come up. But we are too busy taking care of business."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
