There’s A New Speed Record To Beat
On June 8, Swedish automaker Koenigsegg broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest time going from 0 to 300 km/h, or 0 to 186 mph.
In 2011, a Koenigsegg driver in the company’s Agera R set an impressive world record with a time of 21.19 seconds, a record that was said to be unbeatable at the time. Well, this June, Koenigsegg factory driver Robert Serwanski absolutely smashed the previous record with an incredible new time of 17.95 seconds. It was enough to make luxury auto buying services around the world take notice.
The driver performed the feat in the company’s new high performance One:1 at a test track in Ängelholm, Sweden. Speed records are usually broken in small increments, so a difference of 3.24 seconds is remarkable.
For as long as there have been exotic cars, drivers have been racing to outdo each other in them. Speed freaks have been competing for a variety of land speed records for more than a century. Compare the record set by the One:1 to another record set by classic cars like the Ford 999 more than a century ago.
In 1904, a barely known business man named Henry Ford stepped behind the wheel of his new car on a frozen lake outside Detroit. There, he set a new world record by reaching the dizzying speed of 91.37 mph, a record which only stood for a month. Of course, the record did earn publicity for a little organization called the Ford Motor Company.
In the century to come engineers and luxury automobile drivers would chase down much more impressive benchmarks than the 100 mph mark. After World War II, engineers literally started sticking rocket engines onto cars in a quest to break the sound barrier, and to this day companies like Koenigsegg are still trying to top each other.
Some of the highest performing high performance cars available from auto buying services today:
- The Bentley Azure has a top speed of 171 mph
- The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 boasts a horsepower of 1,001 (because 1,000 just wasn’t enough)
- Lamborghini’s Murcielago has a top speed of 211 mph
Check out video of the new record sprint below:
