Koenigsegg's Agera R. The Stig. A frozen lake

The phrase is prophetic, appropriate and recurring. It consists of the first seven words of the following quote: “Be careful, it has eleven-hundred horsepowers. There is sometimes suddenly icy areas of unexpectedness, and the tyres are half as wide at the back as they should be. Seriously, I would be really, really careful,” says Bård Eker in a lilting Norwenglish hybrid accent as he runs me through a checklist of the new Agera R’s intimate buttons. Bård describes himself as ‘chief floor wiper’ at Swedish supercar-maker Koenigsegg, but is, for all his very British sense of humour, a serious stakeholder in the entire operation, a fact borne out by his next statement.

Words: Tom Ford
Photography: Joe Windsor-Williams

This feature was originally published in the May issue of Top Gear magazine

"I would be quite a lot careful. So. Oh, and it is technically my personal car, it is the only one in existence, we haven't really set up the traction control and the car is worth... well, probably about 10 million." I gasp. Ten million pounds? No matter how blasé you might get, that's still a punch to the metaphorical guts. "No, 10 million krona." Good. An enormous amount in a foreign currency is ignorable. Later, it turns out to be about one-point-one million quid. For lots of reasons, I'm glad I wasn't sure in the first place.

I pull the door shut on a white-leather cocoon, a wraparound 'screen with A-pillars pulled back almost into peripheral vision, white, quilted leather and silvery glyph-stamped electronics making bleepy noises that nobody understands. The wheel is white, the change paddles are white, the silvered dash animated and slick, with a touchscreen on the right. Clean and technological, it's only an Apple logo and set of indecipherable apps away from being a Scandinavian Mac user's porn dungeon. The door itself spirals down and in, winding sideways from vertical to horizontal via an M.C. Escher-complicated, architecturally cute door-flange-and-dampers arrangement that you could hang on the wall as industrial art. It seems faintly churlish to call it a mere hinge.

Push the middle button in the silver Simple Simon in the middle of the dash, and the dialset glows blue, accompanied by the jet-like whirr of priming fuel pumps. Press it again, and a heavy-duty starter motor thrums behind your right ear and the percussive bark of a 5.0-litre V8 bangs through the cabin like a sawn-off at close range. Oh my. First impressions are that despite the calming post-modern whiteness of the interior, the Koenigsegg Agera R is no sanitised supercar. It sounds more like a racer. One of the angry ones. Pull both paddles to engage neutral, pull the left-hand ‘down' paddle to engage reverse, pull back and out and finally pull the right-hand paddle for first. Feed in the throttle, find the biting point and ease away.

From the inside, the Agera R sounds shockingly mechanical - you can hear tappets and valves and gurgles and gasps of transferred air and fuel. At idle, it sounds like a tractor having a heart attack. On the move, it sounds like a NASCAR crashing at full throttle into an aviary: thunderous V8 blare followed by the hysterical twitters and whooshes of a feathery massacre. That'll be the pair of turbos mounted on each bank. Lighter throttle loads are punctuated by what can only be described as the sound effect they used on Star Trek when the doors slid back, a kind of sussurating whistle. If that sounds odd, it is. The Agera never stops twittering and farting, and it's all the better for it.

The same goes for the exterior design. This is not a wind tunnel soap bar pared clean and bland in the pursuit of aerodynamic efficiency. This is a big sweary swagger of a car. Low and wide, the basic slipperiness of the standard Agera is overwhelmed first by the R's rear wing, complete with a mechanical damping arrangement that allows for dynamic deformation at speed, as well as the other slight visual tweak; the ruddy great big roof box bolted to the top. Yes, that'll be a 250+mph capable supercar with a Thule roof box. It's been smoothed by the engineers at Koenigsegg to be slightly more aerodynamic, but it's still bloody odd. And brilliant. Utterly brilliant.

You can't see it at all from inside the car, but every time you approach the R, from any angle, the combo of roof-top coffin and wing thing make this a supercar of high - if not actually slightly camp - drama. Pop the flashy doors, and people gasp and make little sighing noises, like tiny drive-by orgasms. It's not conventionally pretty, and it has a lot of seemingly disparate elements, but somehow you can't help thinking that if you want a supercar to look like a supercar, this concoction of exotic pre-preg carbon and Kevlar looks almost like a caricature. Like it should be doing its (theoretical and unproven) top speed of 275mph, all the time.

To drive, it's a lot more brutal than the virginal matt white paint and practical top-box would have you believe. Threading through the crisp blues, whites and greys of Sweden in the spring, things get hectic quickly. First up: the Agera would normally wear oil-drum-shaped rear tyres (345-section 20s),but at the moment is tippy-toeing around on 255 winters. While this is fine for braking a relatively light car from slow speeds on a slippery surface, given that the 'Egg-plus-box has 885lb ft of torque delivered by a pair of turbos the size of your head, it's like trying to stop an avalanche with a stern look and a cutting put-down. It also means that the Agera R is absolutely bloody terrifying. Not in the ‘Wow, this is so fast and thrilling - and yet I feel completely in control!' kind of way, but more in the ‘Christ, I've got to slow down. I have kids I want to see again' kind of way. 

Pull away gently - any forceful application of the throttle merely brings standing-still levels of wheelspin with the traction-control off, a stuttering, inelegant rev-limited launch, if not - and warm up through the first three gears, changing at around 5,000rpm. OK, so it's very quick, but feels like a massive V8 rather than anything likely to give you a short-term g facelift. Time for a bit of boost. There's a fairly slick blending of the turbos into the V8's natural torque curve that means that as the V8 is running out of twist, the turbos kick in.

And immediately spray the back end across two carriageways.

Back off, whoop down a couple of calming breaths, try again a gear up. A smack in the back from the intentionally brutal, single input-shafted Cima seven-speed dual clutch (violent going up, sweet and smooth going down) and: same thing. Full boost simply overwhelms the rear tyres in every gear below seventh, with a heart-stopping wriggle on upchanges or bumps. And there are a lot of bumps. The R will apparently hit 62mph in under three seconds: right now, you'd struggle to get moving at all. On a track, in this trim, the Agera R would be challenging, bordering on scary. In a car as wide as this, on a battle-scarred public road, it's enthusiastically lethal.

There are mitigating factors. Sweden may be sporting an azure horizon and bone-dry tarmac, but the relatively recent disappearance of snow from the roadways has left them covered in dust and salt with the grip characteristics of oiled glass. The roads are viciously cambered, cracked, lumpy and strewn with tree-shaded corners guarding 30ft slicksof sheet ice. Not ideal conditions in a family hatch, slightly less than hellish in a supercar that's about as comforting as a razor blade trampoline. Unknown corners are cautious. On straights made brief by the wanton and reckless application of over 1,000bhp, the Agera bucks down the bumpy roads, tearing great rents in the tranquillity and dragging a 30-foot high rooster tail of road grime up behind it like a gauzy set of dark angel's wings. 

I'm terrified, elated, concentrating like crazy and convinced I'm about to have a massive accident. You unpick the edges of the Agera R's handling and performance like bomb disposal goes about mine-clearance: one stepat a time, and aware that any misstep will have you posted home in an urn. For me, it's too soft at the back, something Bård tells me is easily adjustable via the Triplex triple-spring and damper arrangement of the rear suspension - the horizontal middle spring is adjustable for preference, and the car has been set up to take some of the pressure off those skinny rears. But even though the car is ready to bite, I can't stop. Agera R addiction turns out to be quick, easy and dangerous.

There's truth in the fact that even some of the very fastest hypercars are actually pretty easy to drive, even in extremis. The Veyron - even the 1,200bhp SuperSport - may be an engineering masterpiece, but it can, at times, feel like an Audi TT for all the competency you actually require to get the best from it. And while that makes them very usable for even the most hamfisted and inattentive trustafarians, it also pokes the Agera R into sharp perspective: this is simply not an easy car to drive to its full potential.

It is not a quiet car, or a benign car, or even an elegant car to get in and out of. It's true that the V8is incredibly tractable - it'll pull from a virtual standstill in nearly every gear - and that it rides extremely well at low-to-medium speeds. But all that does is build an entirely false sense of security. After all, when a big dog bares its teeth, chances are it isn't smiling. The Agera R is like that. Just when you think you've got a bit of a handle on it, just when you start to push the carefully judged parameters, turn away for a split second, and it'll have you wearing Sweden as a hat.

Eventually the Agera R starts to wear me out. To really get an idea of the performance potential of a car as aggressive as this, you need space and lots of it, something you simply can't find on a public road surrounded by spruce-textured crash barriers. The thought gently tugs, but 12 hours of R is enough, and eventually I retreat to a small but bijou mountain lair for the night, ears ringing and adrenaline gland dried out like a sultana.

The next day brings more gorgeous weather from Sweden. Bright skies, blazing sun, an equally arresting Koenigsegg. But the Agera R still feels hemmed in by the public highway, I’m sensitive to its claustrophobia and begin casting about for an airport, or bigger expanse of tarmac. Which is when we see the lake. A frozen lake with tyre tracks webbing 70 per cent of its surface. Cars. On a big lake with nothing to hit. Providence is calling, and denial is not just a river in Africa.

Twenty minutes later, and we're chatting to Martin. Martin says we can drive on the lake. "Is it safe?" I enquire, looking at what is quite patently liquid water sloshing around the periphery of the shoreline. "Well, we stopped driving on it a week ago because the ice is thin, but it's probably safe. In parts. Probably," says Martin. I believe it. Martin is saying that the icy racetrack is unquestionably safe. Taking this glowing affirmation of the lake's Health and Safety to heart, we immediately run the Agera down onto the ice.

It is serene. A sheet of blue-white nothing on which to practise consequence-free supercar drifting technique, which approximates tickling the throttle in third gear and then winding on as much of the surprisingly available steering lock in the shortest amount of time as is humanly possible. Bliss. But then, on one glorious arc, there's a crack and a snap and the rear of the Agera dips drunkenly. Momentum carries us through, but it's obvious that being in a car on this ice is a stupid thing to do. So it's time to get out of the car. 

Above my head is a red T-bar handle that opens the roof box, much like one that would launch missiles. So it's time to launch my own secret weapon. I reach, pull and twist and there's a hiss and a faint smell of ozone. Up and out just as the Stig turns towards me. The lower half of his body is slightly blurry, a dark mess that seems to twist into space in a way that makes me slightly nauseous. And then the white thing is out and into the driving seat, ready to race. I pull skis from the base of the roof box, slap on my boots and attach the tow rope. Being in the car is a stupid idea. You could fall through the ice and drown. But being ski-towed by a 1,115bhp supercar on sheet ice by a race demon from the nether regions of Somewhere is OK. Probably.

At least I'm wearing a hat.

The Stig makes a full race start, gentled only by the utter lack of grip. My makeshift ski-rope - modified from an actual vehicle tow rope in no way whatsoever - snaps taut, I smell high-octane fuel and ponder the bark of the Koenigsegg's vee as my arms are pulled out of their sockets and chunks of wet ice smash into my face. And then we're off, drifting around the lake in tandem, the ice cracking, the Agera R barking and the swift scratch and roar of my skis on sheet ice. With even the Stig somewhat hampered by the low-mu surface and hi-po delivery, it's actually incredibly enjoyable, this supercar skiing malarkey. But there's a sense of unreality to it, which lasts for less than half an hour. As the sun arrives, I'm doing more and more waterskiing. And as the Stig drifts around another arc, the Agera's rear tyres chew through the top of the lake and reveal... actual lake. Time to beat a hasty retreat.

The Stig refuses to be re-imprisoned, and strides away across the lake towards Åre. He does not look back. Within seconds, his whiteness has blended with the scenery and he's gone. As I pack away the skis and get off the ice, I realise how unreal this has felt. In fact, the only thing that feels properly real is the Agera R. A complicated experience in a world whose prideful efficiency has lessened our acceptance of less-than-instant gratification. The truth is that this is a proper old-school supercar. You need to learn the Agera R to drive it well. But just by driving it at all, you make the world a more exciting place. And for that we stand in fear-flecked silence, and applaud. Very loudly indeed.