Some records are made to be broken and not just, as is the case with Barry Manilow’s Greatest Hits, through the use of a large hammer. The production-car speed record has slowly crept upward over the years, but it now seems to have been pushed even higher after Koenigsegg drove an Agera RS to 277.9 mph on a closed section of Nevada highway over the weekend.
That’s 16 mph faster than the top speed that Bugatti has claimed for the Veyron Super Sport (the Chiron being limited to a mere 261 mph). Koenigsegg’s new record is even more impressive for having been recorded on a stretch of public highway rather than the more sterile environment of a test track. And if you were wondering just what four and a half miles a minute looks like, and how narrow a four-lane highway becomes at such velocities, timing partner Racelogic has helpfully supplied in-car footage taken on the 11-mile section of Nevada’s Route 160 between Las Vegas and Pahrump that was closed for the record attempt to take place on Saturday. We’re mightily impressed by the fearless commitment shown by factory test driver Niklas Lilja.
According to Koenigsegg spokesman Steven Wade, peak speed was even higher—and you can see that in the video—but the record is taken from a two-way average over the same road. The car did 284.6 mph on the first run and then 271.2 mph on the return; the difference is explained by a rising gradient on the second leg. The team is subjecting telemetry data from the runs to further analysis and reckons that other records, including a flying kilometer, may well have been set, but the official combined number is still deeply impressive. It sets a very serious challenge for the Hennessey Venom F5 that was unveiled at SEMA last week with a 300-mph target.
Even more impressive is that the Koenigsegg used for the record was a privately owned Agera RS—the exact same car that was used to break the zero–400-kph–zero record last month (that’s 248 mph in American). The car dispatched that benchmark in just 36.44 seconds, 5.52 seconds faster than the Bugatti Chiron. The Agera RS uses the same “megawatt” 1341-hp twin-turbo V-8 engine that we experienced in the even lighter Koenigsegg One:1 back in 2015.
While Koenigsegg had planned to use the One:1 to smash the Nürburgring production-car lap record, the company’s plans were thwarted by a combination of bad luck and what seemed to be a certain German reluctance to allow such a relative minnow to achieve the honor. But since then the company has been actively targeting other records, with the mega-speed run in Nevada just the latest in its growing list of achievements. We look forward to seeing what the company targets next.
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