Koenigsegg top speed record: simulations put Absolut ‘beyond 500kmh’

In unsurprising news, Koenigsegg is ‘very keen’ on setting a new production car world record. Unsurprising because at the launch of the Jesko Absolut – a car built for top speed – Christian von Koenigsegg said as much.

In more surprising news, the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut’s top speed simulations have put it way beyond 500kmh (311mph) – which means if the Swedish supercar company’s not-at-all-terrifying supercomputers are correct, the Absolut will be a monster.

Speaking to the Top Gear magazine podcast, CvK reaffirmed the Jesko Absolut’s mission statement – going really, really fast in a straight line, rinse, repeat – and that the team over in Angelholm is raring to go.

“We have the airfield here. We have our supercomputer simulators. We’ve been to a German wind tunnel with the Jesko Attack and Absolut, so we know exactly how the aero works on the car,” CvK told Top Gear.

“We punched those numbers into the very advanced system of the chassis dyno. And it calculates the rolling resistance of the tyre, the drag of the car, it puts correct load on the car at 500kmh if we reach there… and we managed to pass 500kmh in ninth gear before hitting the rev limiter and still having some space in the chassis dyno.

“It doesn’t tell you how stable the car is, but the resistance is there.” That’s right: simulations not only took the Jesko beyond 500kmh - 311mph - but there was room to go faster.

A quick recap, if you'll permit: the Jesko Absolut packs a flat-plane-crank 5.1-litre V8, a nine-speed ‘Light Speed Transmission’, much supercharging and the scary end of 1,578bhp, 1,106lb ft of torque and a 8,500rpm redline. It does not feature a flywheel. It does rev like a superbike.

“The other interesting thing about that is in our chassis dyno we have fans to cool the intercoolers and the radiator in front and so on, but they do not have the flow speed of 500kmh so cooling is worse, you get hotter intake temperatures from the turbos and things like that.

“Even with that, we managed to go beyond 500kmh with the full load case.”

So, right now the chase is on to finalise the rubber – “it’s all down to tyres”, CvK said – and finding a long-enough stretch of tarmac. And like the Agera RS’s 277mph run all those years ago, the Jesko Absolut will likely go hell for leather on a (closed-off) public road.

“We have not been able to find something that feels comfortably long enough that’s not a road,” he said. “Two reasons. We prefer not to floor it from standstill, because that would build in a lot of stress and heat.

“And then when you hit your maximum top speed, preferably you don’t want to slam your brakes because you’re close to the end of your runway or something, you want to lift off, ease down a little bit.” So going flat out on a really, really long road ‘makes a lot of sense’.

The Absolut’s clearly gearing up for breaking some records, fresh from setting a new 0-400kmh-0 time earlier this week. So what happens now?

“We are moving forward,” CvK said. “I hope it will happen soon.” Watch this space. Or, y'know, listen to the full Top Gear magazine interview with CvK right below this space.