With performance figures like these many people thought hypercars had reached their pinnacle. The cars were practically breaking the laws of physics. Bugatti thought they had set a record that would last a long time. Until a small Swedish company called Koenigsegg Automotive decided they’d have a go. Koenigsegg was started by Christian Von Koenigsegg. When he was a child he was inspired by a Swedish Christmas special that he still remembers running on the TV. It was about a bicycle repairman who started his own car company. Koenigsegg built his company after his childhood dream. They are a very small and prestigious car company in Sweden. They produce only around 18 cars per year at their headquarters, which is in an old air force base. This unique factory location allows the team to design, build, and test their cars all on the same campus. A little known fact is that the air force base that the Koenigsegg factory is on used to be occupied by a squadron of fighter planes that would always take off and land in the foggy mornings. Because they always seemed to disappear they were nicknamed the ghost squadron. To commemorate their efforts in battle, every Koenigsegg has a ghost on the car.
Koenigsegg’s flagship the Koenigsegg Agera had just been updated to the Koenigsegg Agera RS. It is a newer, more powerful version of their flagship car. They wanted to make a statement with their car by getting a record setting lap time on the Nurburgring. The first time they attempted this their exhaust note was too loud and it got them disqualified. After waiting to reserve the track again, there was a issue where their test driver crashed their car. For most car companies this wouldn’t have been a big deal but for Koenigsegg, they only had the one prototype. This set them back yet again and by they time they had rebuilt it, the famous Nurburgring track was not allowing anymore record laps for the year due to safety issues. The team at Koenigsegg decided to make their car famous another way, they would put it up against the famous Bugatti in the 0-400-0 race. The Koenigsegg Agera RS was a lighter weight car than the Bugatti, even though it didn't have quite as much power. On paper the calculations said it should be a very close race. In reality the Koenigsegg Agera RS smoked the Bugatti. It did the 0-400-0 in 36.44 seconds. This was such a monumental feat for the small hypercar company. Taking on the automotive giant and winning put them on the map. They started to think what else they could beat the Bugatti at, so they went for top speed. Koenigsegg went to Nevada and shut down a stretch of road through the desert to set what is now currently the world record for fastest production car. The Koenigsegg Agera RS went set the record at 277.9 mph. This is an astonishing number because in reality, to set these records the cars have to go on the same stretch of road, once in each direction, and the average top speed is the one that's taken as their “top speed”. That means that going with the wind the Agera RS was able to hit 284 mph. The race is still on, Koenigsegg is working on developing their next, even more powerful, even lighter weight hypercar in that Swedish airplane hanger as you read this. They know they aren’t the only ones. The McLaren F1 was undoubtedly the best performance car of the time, even today it is the fastest naturally aspirated hypercar. But all of that came at a very pretty price, it cost $1 million. Which begs the question, who would buy such a thing? The F1 attracted the usual hypercar clientele, celebrities such as Mr. Bean owned one, and avid engineering enthusiasts such as Elon Musk owned one too. The F1 was Musk’s first purchase after he sold his first major company, Paypal. The F1 is still a legend today and McLaren continues to makes high performance supercars.
The F1 stayed the fastest production car until Bugatti decided they were tired of being the second fastest, and most forgotten about, hypercar producer. In 2005 Bugatti launched the Veyron. The Veyron used Bugattis’ traditional formula of massive amounts of power to create a vehicle that goes over 267 mph. This was no small feat, Bugatti faced many challenges. One of the most interesting engineering challenges Bugatti faced during the development of the car was that the original car would take flight at 400 kilometers per hour. For reference, most planes take off at 280 kilometers per hour. Bugatti went to Dallara for a wind-tunnel evaluation. After countless renders, a new design was established and assembled for another round of testing in the wind tunnel. Bugatti found that adding active aerodynamics could reduce drag and increase downforce at optimal speeds for the vehicle. Once this issue was solved, Bugatti went to test their vehicle and they realized that there were not tires made to withstand those speeds. They called up Michellen and told them they needed a tire that could withstand speeds of over 250 mph (400km/h). Michelin didn’t even have testing equipment that could simulate those forces. Bugatti had to help them develop equipment to design, construct, and test their tires in order to put the shoes on their world record-breaking vehicle. There are 3,800 G’s on the tires at max speed on the Bugatti. Creating these tires alone was significant research and development, Bugatti finally decided to use aerospace grade glue on the tires to keep them on the rims of the car. That means that there tires are $42,000 to replace. All of these challenges were overcome in order for the hypercar to evolve, since then Bugatti has created the Chiron, a newer version of the Veyron that they claim is faster but have not set official top speed records with. But they did set the 0-400-0 record just last year. The car was able to accelerate from a stand still to 400 kph and then brake to a complete stop in 41.96 seconds. This was an incredible demonstration of the car’s immense power and engineering that Bugatti showcased. While Bugatti and Jaguar were buys fussing over one mph, a little racing company called McLaren had a team of executives that were supposed to be flying back from a race but got stuck in the airport. What does the head of a racing company, an entrepreneur, and a head designer talk about while stuck in an airport together? The not-so-theoretical street car variant of the McLaren race cars they were currently only using on race tracks. They decided after their talk that it may actually be worth doing so they started McLaren cars, and hired the best people from around the world to all come together and hash out the details of their new hypercar. They locked themselves in the boardroom for ten hours until they all agreed that if they were going do this, it would have to be the absolute best hypercar on the market and be the fastest, best car for years to come. They decided to use carbon fiber for the body of their car, the same material they use to build their F1 car. This was the first production car ever built from carbon fiber. Little did they know, they were starting an era of high performance carbon fiber hypercars. Carbon fiber had a better strength to weight ratio than plastic, steel, and even aluminium. Lightweight meant a higher top speed and high strength meant great handling capability. It was the perfect choice for the construction of their car.
McLaren decided that they didn’t want their vehicle to be turbolagged like the previous Bugatti EB110, so the engine had to be naturally aspirated. They struggled time and time again to create such an engine so they contracted it out the best engine designers on the planet, the Germans! McLaren hired BMW to build them a 6.1L V12 engine that makes over 600 hp without turbochargers! This was unheard of at the time and even today to get that much power auto manufacturers use turbochargers. McLaren being a small production car company had a lot of challenges along the way creating their hypercar. Once they finally decided how to construct it, and where to get their magical engine from they ran into the problem of the massive engine melting the engine bay in testing from the massive amounts of heat it would produce. The engineers at McLaren had yet another very expensive solution to their problems. They called the boardroom up and said they would need gold, yes gold, to line the engine bay so that it would act as a heat shield. Apparently, gold was the only metal that had the correct properties to shield the engine bay from the heat of the massive V12. All of these extreme engineering challenges were overcome and McLaren produced 100 of these extreme cars. The F1 had a top speed of 243 mph, and had the driver's seat in the middle of the car. The F1 was everything they had ever dreamed of, it was exotic, fast, light, and the absolute best driving machine ever created. What is a hypercar? It’s hard to stick a definition to such a powerful word. Hypercars are a demonstration of the ability of the human race. They showcase the latest advancements in all fields and combine them in order to form the ultimate machine. They have the capability of making humans feel superhuman by giving us the ability to barrel across landscapes at unworldly speeds in complete control. They manifest power and competence at every angle, and they are the ultimate trophy for the elite.
The types of people that buy supercars don’t own just one, in fact according to Car Throttle magazine they own 84 cars, 3 private jets, and a yacht. Being surrounded in a world by all this affluence begs the question: How did these things come to be? The answer: well in most cases they didn’t. The start of the hypercar evolution can be traced back to the 1980’s when the economy was thriving and automotive companies such as Jaguar and Bugatti were still new to the game. But they had money and engineers with a passion for speed and outright godly performance. That’s why in 1991 when the Jaguar XJ220 was first released with a top speed of 217 mph it was the fastest production car in the world. Until one month later when Bugatti released their EB110, with a top speed of 218 mph. Bugatti went a whole different direction with this car, unlike the lightweight jaguar, they used their famous recipe of overpowering the potatoes out of their car. Bugatti fitted it with a 3.5 liter, quad turbocharged V12. These cars were absolute beasts that smashed world records, but nobody noticed, “the only people who might have bought them were too busy hurling themselves out of their office windows on Wall Street.” -Jeremy Clarkson. This is definitely a provocative and bold statement but the point Clarkson is trying to get across is very true. You can have the best engineers, designers, and create the fastest car in the world. But if the economy turns, none of that seems to matter. Due to the astronomical price of these cars their success is very reliant on some factors which are out of their control, which is really a shame because today there are only 3 production cars that are faster than these cars. What does it take to produce a car that can travel from zero to 400 kilometers per hour and then back to zero again in 36.44 seconds, and have top speed of over 446 kilometers per hour? This is the story of the evolution of the hypercar, and how a small time Swedish company called Koenigsegg Automotive was able to build a car that outperformed the world record-holding automotive giant Bugatti.
The efforts that go into creating a hypercar are beyond what most people can comprehend. As a human race we only thrive because of our technological advancements. The automotive world is a pioneer in technological advancements. The creation of hypercars are the perfect melody of modern day science, technology, art, and mathematics. These developments don't come without struggles, the struggles of the car companies that have pushed the boundaries of the laws of physics are greater than most people can fathom. This is the story of how they have overcome these challenges and continue to push the automotive world even further. This will demonstrate the ability of the human race to keep persevering for technological advancements and show how, with enough hard work, even a little company such as Koenigsegg Automotive can do it. Works Cited
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