Swedish hypercar maker Koenigsegg celebrates 20th birthday with jaw-dropping CC850, modelled on its first car.
To mark its 20th anniversary, Swedish hypercar specialist Koenigsegg has reimagined its debut production car, the CC8S, as a wildly powerful and thoroughly modern vision of what it calls “the ultimate driver’s car”: the CC850.
It is more a tribute to that car than a recreation or ‘restomod’, being more closely related, mechanically, to Koenigsegg’s recent Jesko, Gemera and Regera hypercars, and fusing elements of the CC8S’s design with cues taken from those newer models.
Obvious features taken from the pioneering 2002 ‘megacar’ include Koenigsegg’s trademark circular brake light clusters, teledial wheels and the party-trick ‘synchrohelix’ door-opening system.
The interior is similarly conceived, adopting a minimalist aesthetic modelled on the earliest Koenigsegg cars, with an open-gate gearshifter, an analogue gauge cluster behind a function-free round steering wheel and a wealth of exposed carbonfibre.
But underneath, the CC850 is an entirely different beast. Muscle – all 1005kW and 1386Nm of it – is supplied by a variant of the firm’s latest 5.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8. The engine is dry-sumped for optimal oil distribution in extreme driving situations, can run on synthetic fuels and does without a flywheel, which, Koenigsegg says, makes it “the most responsive, fast-revving engine possible”. It redlines at 8500rpm, and the brand promises that the “aural sensations are truly other-worldly and incomparable”.
Built around a carbon monocoque, cloaked in carbon/Kevlar body panels and with aluminium honeycomb fuel tanks, the CC850 tips the scales at just 1385kg – more than half a tonne lighter than the Bugatti Chiron. It should be comfortably one of the quickest combustion cars in production although the brand has yet to detail performance figures.
Notably, it says the CC850 “was not created to break Jesko track records or top speeds, but to be up there performance-wise and offer the highest level of driver satisfaction and enjoyment.”
To that end, the company highlights the new ‘Engage Shift System’ – a claimed world-first innovation that essentially changes the ratios of the six-speed manual gearbox to offer differing performance characteristics according to the drive mode. It also has an automatic gearbox setting with nine ratios for more relaxed driving.
Coincidentally, the company’s anniversary falls at around the same time as the 50th birthday of charismatic founder Christian von Koenigsegg, and so just 50 examples will be produced. The company has yet to confirm a launch date, or give any idea of pricing (expect north of $2.5 million), but it says the symmetrical interior design facilitates right- and left-hand-drive construction, possibly hinting at plans for Australia to receive one or two.
Felix Page