Driven and Survived: 1341-hp Koenigsegg One:1 (2024)

From the February 2015 issue of Car and Driver

Everything is going fine until we reach 150 mph. And then, very suddenly, it’s not.

Just sitting in the passenger seat of the Koenigsegg One:1 (we explain the silly name later) as it attacks a wet runway is, in terms of spiked adrenaline, somewhere between a solo sky dive and being chased by a bull while running in red pants. But as the man from the factory demonstrates, even in the sodden conditions we’ve found waiting for us in Sweden, the world’s fastest car can still be easily controlled. Or so it seemed.

It’s been raining all day, and the One:1 is struggling to put its monstrous power onto the slick surface of the former airbase that serves as Koenigsegg’s test track. The engine is bellowing and the car squirming and sliding as the twin-turbocharged V-8 comes on boost. Even with the stability control switched on and working overtime, it’s struggling to find grip. Running on regular pump gasoline means around 1161 horsepower; 1341 horses and 1011 pound-feet come when it’s fueled with E85. But either way, that’s vastly more twist than the rear Michelins can deliver to the soaked tarmac. Glancing across at the instrument display, I can see that the wheels only stop trying to spin as we pass 125 mph, when serious aerodynamic downforce starts to push the car into the track.

For a couple of heartbeats, we experience the full, brutal acceleration of a car that makes a steam catapult look underpowered.

And then, with a jarring suddenness, the car snaps sideways, and, although the runway is still arriving at an undiminished rate, it’s now coming at the passenger window. A look across the co*ckpit confirms that this isn’t part of the show; our driver’s face makes it clear that we’re having an unscripted moment in a $2.8 million hypercar. He briefly holds the slide, and then there’s the sensation of momentum shifting, the pendulum swinging back. There isn’t enough opposite lock in the world to catch this one, and sideways becomes backwards toward the edge of the runway.

There’s time aplenty to frame a couple of thoughts. First, and most pressingly, I wonder what will happen if we finish upside down in a car with scissor-hinged doors. Second, and more incongruously, I observe that the grounds-keeping standards have really slipped since the Swedish air force vacated this place 12 years ago. As the edge of the runway approaches, it seems to be made up more of stuff than space: bush, gap, tree, gap, bush, gap, and so on, rushing past like the repeating background in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

We’re lucky. We leave the runway through one of the gaps, threading a line between two substantial bushes 50 yards apart at such an angle that we almost hit both. The car comes to rest after another half-rotation, right side up and having encountered nothing harder than scythed grass as it spins to a stop. The cabin is filled with exhaled breath, swearwords in two languages, and nervous laughter. And now it’s my turn to drive.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the Koenigsegg One:1 was designed as an online meme as much as an actual hypercar. Within scant seconds of Koenigsegg releasing the details of this even faster, even more hard-core version of the existing Agera R, it was vying with Kim Kardashian’s backside to break the internet.

Let’s start with the name, which is meant to be pronounced as a ratio, as in “one-to-one,” rather than “one-one.” It refers to both the car’s metric power output of one megawatt (or 1341 horsepower, when running on that E85 alcohol-gasoline blend) and its perfectly balanced power-to-metric-weight ratio. As in, 1.0 kilogram to 1.0 PS (or Pferdestarke, which equals 0.986 horsepower). Did we mention that geeks built this car? Its other claimed numbers read like a fanboy fantasy, too. It’ll go from a dead stop to 250 mph in 20 seconds, reach a 273-mph top speed, and generate 1345 pounds of downforce at 160 mph.

Yet it’s real. Koenigsegg has made it, and we’ve been invited to the factory in Ängelholm in southern Sweden to drive it. In the little jewelry box that is its market, Koenigsegg has become a major player. Only seven One:1s will be made, with four going to Asia, two to Europe, and one to the U.S.

However, should they opt to visit, the hypercar-buying elite won’t exactly be overwhelmed by Koenigsegg’s factory. The low-rise offices and the pair of former aircraft hangars painted turf green offer exactly none of the drama of standing before Ferrari’s famous gate. No evidence of the company’s products is parked outside, and with just 115 cars built over the past 12 years, this is hardly a big-inventory type of operation. Yet Koenigsegg does more under its own roof than almost any other automaker. All the engineering and design is based here; every carbon-fiber part is molded and baked on-site, including components like seat frames and wheels; and the cars are painted and trimmed here. The engines are also built and dyno-tested here. Everything is done by hand, and everything seems to take eons. Assembling the body shell from 400 separate pieces takes 600 hours. Just painting a car takes between 800 and 1200 hours, depending on the finish.

Eventually I meet the One:1, sitting apart from the main production area with its rear clamshell propped up and its scissor-hinged doors open. There isn’t any heavenly music, but it does become impossible to concentrate on anything else. Like the company’s other models, the Won-to-won is not classically beautiful. But it does look devastatingly effective, covered as it is in aerodynamic winglets and vanes and with that vast rear wing, like a blinged-up LMP1 racer.

I’m gawping so hard that it takes longer than it should to realize we’ve been joined by Christian von Koenigsegg himself. The company’s stout, bald founder always looks as if he’s just a white cat away from being a Bond villain, but he’s affability itself in person. He talks me through the GPS-adaptive suspension and its ability to adjust damping corner by corner on selected racetracks, and regrets that the prototype I’ll be driving (and it is the prototype) doesn’t have the active noise-cancellation system the company has designed for the production models. Then, almost as an afterthought, he mentions his and the company’s plans to smash the production-car record at the Nürburgring Nordschleife this year. He figures that both the Agera R and the One:1 will be able to comfortably beat the Porsche 918’s lap of 6 minutes and 57 seconds. “When we look at the sector times, we’re already on course for a record,” he says.

All that seems a far-off dream as we’re parked in the dank grass next to a waterlogged runway. We’ve had a near miss while being driven by an expert in a straight line. The One:1 may not have earned itself a reputation as a widowmaker yet, but it feels as if today could be the day.

The good news is that the car is blameless. Nothing broke, snapped, or deflated. Walking back to where the spin began reveals more than an inch of water pooled in the center of the track. Even the One:1’s massive downforce couldn’t have stopped it from aquaplaning on its four rolling pins of rubber. So if we drive carefully, we should be fine.

Strapping into the One:1 is an event. The seat squeezes you tightly enough to constitute a sexual-harassment violation, and a six-point harness clamps you in place like you’re about to take the green at Le Mans. The trim is minimal but very expensive, with carbon everywhere and no parts-bin switchgear to betray the rifling of a Ford Focus for its plastic bits. The central TFT speedometer reads to a no-bull 450 km/h (280 mph), and to the bottom left of the instrument panel there’s a small power gauge to show what horsepower the engine is producing. It reads to 1200.

Sadly, that’s one jackpot I’ll not be hitting this afternoon. The One:1 is well mannered during a gentle sighting run, the engine loud but tractable at low revs, surging as the turbochargers spin up. The 5.1-liter V-8 produces 738 pound-feet of torque from just 3000 rpm, and the traction control is cutting in with barely a couple of inches of throttle applied. I try a full-throttle standing start, which brings a Götterdämmerung of sound and fury as engine and tires engage in open warfare. But the power meter doesn’t go over the 600 mark, and the wheels are still trying to spin at 100 mph. Acceleration feels immense; the frustration is knowing how much beyond immense it would be were it not soaking wet out.

We give up on the track and head back to the factory, taking a scenic tour of some of the local roads. Considering it’s the black-hearted, turned-up-to-11 spinoff of what’s already a track-focused hellion, the One:1 deals well with the real world. It rides smoothly despite its rubber-bushing-free suspension, and the steering is nicely weighted and extremely accurate but not geared too quickly. The seven-speed automated manual isn’t the quickest, offering a distinct pause between gears. Gearchanges at high rpm are sharpened by a second clutch, similar to the brakes found in planetary automatics and fitted to the rear of the input shaft, which slows the input speed and eases synchro workload [see “Inside the ’Egg’s Shell” on the next page]. But it’s easy to drive safely at the sort of pace that almost nothing else could touch, without using all its perform­ance. As we approach the factory, the One:1 demonstrates another of its tricks, the suspension automatically lifting the front end for the speed bumps the GPS knows are coming.

Before going to bed, and having done some research on Wiki, I offer a quiet invocation to Sól, the Norse god of the sun, to give us some dry pavement in the morning.

My prayer is half-answered. Dawn arrives gray and cloudy, but it’s not actually raining. The runway is damp and greasy, the standing water is gone. The conditions are as good as they’re going to get.

Koenigsegg’s test driver Robert Serwanski (not the man who spun the One:1 earlier) is with me today. He’s a former Mazda MX-5 Cup racer who somehow went from driving one of the world’s slowest race cars to the job of developing the world’s fastest road car. If things go according to plan, he will be the man driving for the Nordschleife record attempt later this year. He takes the One:1 for a what-will-it-do run, stability control switched off and the car drifting back and forth down the center of the runway in a neat sine wave as he tries to work some heat into the tires. He returns to report that, although traction is poor, I should be able to get to 200 mph and still have room to stop in the slightly-more-than-a-mile distance that Koenigsegg uses for testing.

I don’t hang around to wonder whether this is a good idea. From a gentle start, it’s obvious there’s more grip and traction than yesterday. The back end is still wriggling as the torque arrives, but it’s a gentle retiree-dinner-dance shimmy compared with yesterday’s full-on twerking. The throttle delivers far stronger response, and the pedal goes deeper before the traction control intervenes. Serwanski says the stability control works best if you don’t try to second-guess it with your own steering corrections. At full throttle, acceleration be-comes brutal. Forget that supercar staple, the forceful shove in the back; the One:1 attacks you like Jack Reacher in a bar fight.

Even in fourth gear, the engine is still flaring as the rear wheels lose and regain grip. But then, on the slippery surface, something genuinely amazing happens as the aerodynamic downforce pushes harder and the tires connect. Well north of 100 mph, the rate of acceleration actually increases as the tires get a firm purchase on the damp surface. I change up at 8000 rpm and glance, very briefly, at the power meter, which is reading 1000. There are only a few seconds to experience the One:1 in full flight; the end of the runway is starting to look very big in the windshield. But it’s enough.

I leave Sweden both elated and frustrated. We experienced a full-throttle run in the One:1, and I have no doubt that it is one of the fastest cars ever to wear a license plate. And also one of the most exciting. We just wish we’d had a wide, dry racetrack and a liberal insurance policy to enjoy it properly. It doesn’t matter what you’ve driven before, the One:1 is going to challenge you. This is a car that makes a 40-yard-wide military runway seem like Ted Kaczynski’s driveway, a car that makes 1000-plus horsepower feel as exciting as that number should. On a feline scale, it would be an angry mountain lion while the McLaren P1 is a house cat that brings in the occasional bird, and the Bugatti Veyron is an overweight old tom snoozing on the veranda, tail under an empty rocking chair.

We’ll be truly surprised if the One:1 doesn’t prove to be the fastest production car to ever lap the Nordschleife. Hypercar fanboys, bow down before your new god.

Inside The 'Egg's Shell

Engine (FIG.1): Tuned version of the V-8 already fitted to the 1140-hp Agera R. The company says it designed this engine to make 1500 horses and then wound it back to improve drivability. Can run on regular gas, E85, or high-octane race fuel. Has variable-geometry turbochargers, ceramic-coated exhaust headers, and a carbon-fiber intake manifold.

Transaxle: Automated-manual transaxle features a secondary hydraulically controlled clutch at the rear of the input shaft to act as a brake during upshifts, helping the synchro cones engage more quickly. Gives a claimed 0.06-second shift time. Features an electronically controlled locking differential. The whole unit weighs just 172 pounds.

Wheels and tires (FIG.2): Carbon-fiber wheels are half the weight of alloys and four times stronger. Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires compounded for this application are sized 265/35ZR-19 at the front and 345/30ZR-20 at the rear.

Aerodynamics (FIG.3): The rear wing adjusts 31 degrees and is further assisted by adaptive flaps on the underside of the bodywork. Peak downforce—at 273 mph—is 1830 pounds.

Active systems (FIG.4): The One:1 uses GPS to adjust the car for each corner on mapped racetracks, tweaking suspension, stability-control, differential, and aero parameters. It defaults to safe settings if the GPS signal is lost. Built-in 3G data stream allows systems to be updated remotely almost anywhere in the world.

Suspension (FIG.5): Rubber-free suspension uses needle bearings instead of bushings and carbon-fiber springs operated through pushrods. Additional “triplex” damper connects both sides of the rear suspension to resist squat. Each wheel hub carrier is machined from an aluminum billet.

Weight: Prototype weighs 2998 pounds with all engine fluids and half a tank of fuel (Christian von Koenigsegg proudly showed us a picture of the scales on his phone). Production versions will be about 45 pounds lighter due to additional weight-saving measures.

Noise cancellation: The production One:1 will also get Koenigsegg’s active noise-cancellation system, which uses speakers to reduce cabin noise at a constant cruise by up to 20 decibels.

Brakes: Vast carbon-ceramic rotors are gripped by two-piece calipers, six-piston at the front and four-pot at the rear. “They give better feel than monoblock calipers. We don’t know why, but they do,” says von Koenigsegg.