Koenigsegg CCX it's been more than five years since our backsides were intimate with the carbon-fiber seat of the only supercar made in Sweden, the Koenigsegg CCX. That's probably long enough ago that you're saying out loud, "Koenigsegg CCX what??
To bring you up to speed, here's a Koenigsegg CCX primer: Christian von Koenigsegg CCX was just 22 when he started a car company in 1994 with the hope of producing what many thought was a pipe dream — the world's fastest production sports car. In the '90s, the king of the exotics was the outrageous $815,000 McLaren F1, capable of 231 mph. How could a kid from Sweden one-up mighty McLaren?
In November 2001, we tested a prototype of his first car , dubbed the CC V-8. Koenigsegg CCX it had all the exotic-car trappings — carbon-fiber chassis, swiveling doors, 655 horsepower from a mid-mounted supercharged V-8, and an estimated $300,000 price. A slipping clutch soured our test drive, but the car showed potential, running to 60 mph in 4.1 seconds. A retest was in order, but we decided to wait until a promised U.S. version arrived stateside.
While we waited, Koenigsegg CCX tinkered. In 2004, he introduced a new model — the CCR — that came with 151 more horsepower, 806 in all. This car achieved the unthinkable in 2005 — it outran the McLaren — getting up to 241 mph at the seven-mile Nardo test track in Italy. But Koenigsegg CCX glory would last just a year, as our own Csaba Csere drove a $1.25 million Bugatti Veyron 16.4 to 253 mph [C/D, November 2005].
Still, Koenigsegg CCX had made his point. Thirty-four of his cars have been sold abroad, and it is now available in the U.S. But we only had a chance for a brief drive of the 2006 CCX and not the hoped-for instrumented test session.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire