Sweedish supercar manufacturer Koenigsegg is responding to being left out of recent « Holy Trinity » comparisons. Holy Trinity refers to the Ferrari LaFerrari, Porsche 918 and McLaren P1 which are considered the world’s fastest supercars. The first sanctioned comparison between the three was published Nov 19 by Chris Harris (see the video and read what MontrealRacing thought of that comparo in the discussion thread here). Another unsanctioned test was published by SCD-TV and you can view that thread here. A third comparison by Alejandro Salomon even threw in the Bugatti Veyron and Pagani Huyara and you can read that thread here.
Discuss THIS topic in the forum here.
In their blog post, Koenigsegg writes:
There has been a lot of talk in the motoring press and online about the #HolyTrinity of hypercars. For those of you who are unaware, the #HolyTrinity is comprised of the Porsche 918 Hybrid, the Ferrari LaFerrari and the McLaren P1. Youtube videographers and car magazines around the globe are dampening their trousers at the prospect of getting their hands on all three cars and testing them together.
A few of them have finally done it, lapping the cars and putting them through drag races to see which one performs best.
Regardless of who the ‘winner’ is (if there can be such a thing in these tests) we have to acknowledge that all three are beautifully executed cars that carry a lot of technology in them.
Does it trouble Koenigsegg that we’re not included in tests like these, that we’re not included in the #HolyTrinity that publications are writing about so much? Not really. Well, not until such a time as it troubles any of our customers.
Last night, I had an email from a customer. He wanted some reassurance that the Agera RS he had on order was competitive with the 0-186mph times achieved by the #HolyTrinity in this video from SuperCarDriver (SCD) on Youtube…
Disclaimer: It would normally be considered somewhat impolite for a company such as ours to talk about our vehicle’s performance this way. This is why we don’t usually talk directly about competitor cars when we do performance tests. We let the figures speak for themselves. However, in this instance, with one of our customers writing to us directly about this, we thought it important to say something, primarily to provide reassurance to our customers about the cars that they are buying.
Let’s go directly to the graphic for the 0-186mph times achieved for the three cars.
Note: 186mph is equivalent to 300kmh.
It should be said from the outset that these seem like exceptionally slow times for these cars. As noted in the video, Bruntingthorpe has a 2% incline and it’s likely that this uphill sprint had an effect on the times achieved.
Let’s compare the manufacturer’s times for 0-300 with the times achieved by SCD.
Porsche 918
SCD: 22.95 sec
Porsche: 19.9 sec (with Weissach package)
Ferrari LaFerrari
SCD: 21.99 sec
Ferrari: 15 sec
McLaren P1
SCD: 20.11 sec
McLaren: 16.5 sec
There are some absolutely crazy differences in these times. Up to 7 seconds in the case of the LaFerrari.
Let’s have a look at some comparative times for Koenigsegg cars. We’ll use the manufacturer’s claimed times rather than the SCD times because a) they’re faster and therefore fairer to the manufacturers, and b) they’re presumably not compromised by the incline in the track shown on the video.
The fastest claimed 0-300 time by any of these manufacturers is the 15 seconds claimed by Ferrari for the LaFerrari. Then comes the 16.5 seconds claimed by McLaren for the P1. The Porsche is an outlier in this instance with a time of 19.9 seconds but it is understood that the Porsche is aimed at acceleration at the lower end rather than the higher end (as shown by their exceptional, unbeaten 6:57 at the Nurburgring).
So how do Koenigsegg models compete with these times?
We are on the record – with video support – as having achieved a 14.53second time for a 0-300kmh sprint. That time is half-a-second faster than the fastest manufacturer-claimed time from the #HolyTrinity cars.
That was with an Agera R in 2011.
We are also on the record – with video support – as having achieved an11.922 second time for a 0-300kmh sprint. That’s a full three seconds faster than the fastest #HolyTrinity claimed time.
That was earlier in 2015 with the One:1
We don’t have an acceleration figure from 0-300kmh for the Agera RS because we don’t (yet) have an Agera RS factory test car. All the RS’s built so far are for customers. We will have our own RS test car soon.
We would expect the Agera RS in standard configuration to achieve a figure somewhere between the Agera R and the One:1, both of which are already quicker than the #HolyTrinity times. An Agera RS with the One:1 engine upgrade would, of course, be faster still.
And note that we fully expect the Koenigsegg Regera (still in shakedown testing) to get to 400kmh in under 20 seconds.
Conclusion:
The #HolyTrinity is made up of exceptionally good performance cars that any fair-minded person would be happy to own. Acceleration is only one aspect of performance car ownership but we just wanted to demonstrate to our customers and fans that our vehicles lose no ground when compared against this lofty competition.
And with up to 2G’s of lateral grip in the One:1, we don’t think we’d lose anything in the corners, either. Our lap records at Suzuka and Spasupport this, but we know that everyone is waiting for us to tackle the Nurburgring, which we definitely want to do when restrictions are finally lifted in 2016.
