In March 2020, whilst the world naively went about it’s business ahead of what was pandemic mayhem, Cristian von Koenigsegg unveiled to the world two things; the incredible Jesko Absolut and his ambition to hit the Holy Grail 300 mph mark in the same car!
That wasn’t enough for the founder of the Swedish brand which is one of the most exciting hypercar manufacturers in the world! He also claimed that no other future model would be able to top it in, following in the path of Bugatti which has stopped chasing speed records after the Chiron Super Sport 300+.
We know of course that the Chiron has managed to hit 304.77 mph (490 km/h), no Koenigsegg has done that yet.
However, in a recent interview with Top Gear magazine, Christian again re-affirmed his company’s commitment to go full throttle and beyond in the Jesko Absolute.
Of course, Christian is a very intelligent man, and he wouldn’t make such claims blindly! He knows what he’s saying is possible because he has done the real-world modelling – and by the way, this is real modelling using science, facts and reasonable extensions of unknowns rather than the fear-based projections of the Pandemic mayhem!
“It would be a shame not to show what it can do” , said Koenigsegg …
“At the same time, it’s really scary stuff. When we did the prevailing record of a homologated production car in two directions at 277 mph in Nevada on an open road with the Agera RS, it’s just super dangerous. I would like to have a closed-off area, maybe like Ehra-Lessien where it’s very wide, where you can take out some of that side of it because it’s scary enough anyway. We’d definitely want to have our hand over it just for safety reasons. Checking the venue, the road, having an experienced driver.”
The reference to the raceway here is to the Volkswagen Group’s Ehra-Lessien test track in Lower Saxony, Germany which was also visited by unrestricted versions of the Chiron Super Sport 300+ and the Veyron Super Sport before it made its historic run. Innocently we expect that to happen, however the politics of the world may dampen that goal as VW may not want to risk their W16 hypercar being beaten on their own track.
Although the Chiron poses the real healthy competition to the Jesko, Koenigsegg feels less serious about the Hennessey Venom F5. The primary reason is that they removed safety items like airbags in order to pursue weight loss meaning that the car cannot be homologated. He went further actually to make the point that engineering the Jesko Absolut to comply with all regulations adds the challenge of complexity and weight while reducing the engine’s power.
“If you bring non-homologated cars into the mix, you can bring in these ‘rocket cars’ from the salt flats – they don’t have airbags, or emissions controls or OBD either. And they go 1,000 mph.”
You can read the rest of the interview at Top Gear.
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