Koenigsegg: Built for Speed
By: Matthew D. Period 5
Koenigsegg was founded in 1994 by a Swedish man named Christian von Koenigsegg. Mr. Koenigsegg was inspired to design and build cars when he went with his father to see a Norwegian stop-motion film,Pinchcliffe Grand Prix. He founded Koenigsegg to design and build his dream car instead of buying it. An interesting fact about Koenigsegg is that the basic body style has stayed the same for every Koenigsegg throughout the years.
Some of Koenigsegg's rivals are Bugatti, Hennessey, Pagani, McLaren, Lamborghini, and Ferrari. While some may think that the world's fastest street legal car is the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport or the Hennessey Venom GT, that is actually not true. The FASTEST street-legal car is the Koenigsegg One:1, with a top speed of 273 miles per hour. The Veyron SS can only reach 267 mph, and the Venom GT can only reach 270 mph. But with a lot of power, it costs a lot of money. $4,850,000, to be exact, and even if you could afford it, you couldn't have it because only seven were built and all of them have been sold.
To make these cars go so fast, they need to be made of special materials. One of these special materials is called carbon-fiber. The entire exterior of the car, excluding doors and windows, is made of carbon fiber. Some special features of their cars include a removable roof which can be stowed away under the hood, and doors that open so that the front of the door faces the ground.
Some interesting facts about Koenigsegg is that in 2009, Koenigsegg built the Quant, a one-off, four seater electric car made for a special customer. Also, the Koenigsegg CCXR runs on E85 biofuel and has 1,018 horsepower. In addition to that, they built a special version of the CCXR called the Trevita. Its carbon-fiber is coated in a diamond finish so that it will sparkle like a diamond when light hits it.
So, Koenigseggs sound pretty cool, don't they? I know I would want one, because if it is built by hand and is designed to drive fast, it has to be good.
Bibliography
Works Cited
"Koenigsegg | Official Website of the Swedish Hypercar Manufacturer." Koenigsegg RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.
"Koenigsegg." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Feb. 2014. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.