It’s no surprise that Koenigsegg is revolutionizing the world of automotive technology; Christian Von Koenigsegg is no stranger to throwing the rule book out of the window and producing jaw-dropping performance. As such, Mr. JWW’s latest YouTube video profiles the Agera and all of its peculiar innovations.
As Agera means to take action in Swedish, there couldn’t be a better callsign for this supercar; it was a very transitional vehicle for the company, moving from supercharging to turbocharging, carbon-ceramic brakes made in-house, and even its own special vortex generating wheels.
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A clear party piece of the original, the Vortex Generating Rims (VGR) were designed to simultaneously provide the brakes with cool air while producing extra downforce. Along with their impressive functionality, the VGR hoops looked tremendous on the original car before Koenigsegg took it a step further with carbon fiber wheels.
Things are equally revolutionary under the skin where the Agera received a substantial upgrade in the performance department. The transition to turbocharging is great, but the supercar features a simple yet incredibly effective upgrade to the exhaust system. The engineering department figured out that bypassing the pre-cat – essentially a second catalytic converter used to lower emissions – under high load produced a gain of around 300 horsepower (223 kilowatts).
Along with being leaps and bounds more advanced than its predecessor, the Agera received a proportional upgrade in the looks department. While the former was undoubtedly nice to look at, the latter set the tone for Koenigsegg’s design future. As the Swedish automaker was still in its infancy at this point, only a few examples were built from 2010 to 2014 – it remains a surprisingly rare beast.
Semantics aside, the Swedish supercar remains an immensely potent creation even by today’s standards. It’s clear that along with being an automotive mad scientist, Christian Von Koenigsegg knows the right mix of spices to create some wicked machines.