With the likes of Bugatti and Hennessey jostling for pole position, there is plenty happening at the high-end of the hypercar game. But it looks like there is a new top dog in town, at least in terms of two-way land speed records. Koenigsegg's Agera RS has set a new benchmark for a production vehicle, with an astounding average speed of 277 mph (447 km/h) on a public highway in Nevada.
In claiming the production car land speed record over the weekend, Koenigsegg left previous record-holder Bugatti, which claimed the throne with a 268-mph (431-km/h) effort in 2010, in its wake. And not for the first time in the last month. In early October, Koenigsegg shattered the 0-400-0 km/h world record set by the Bugatti Chiron just weeks earlier, with a 1,360-hp (1,014-kW) Agera RS destined for a customer in the US.
This very same car was stretched to its Earth-scorching limits by factory test driver Niklas Lilja on Saturday, along an 11-mile (17.7 km) piece of public highway near Las Vegas on Saturday that had been shut down by Nevada authorities for the attempt. Lilja actually clocked an obscene 284.55 mph (458 km/h) in one direction, and then 271.19 mph (436 km/h) on the return while battling an uphill gradient and strong headwind.
While Bugatti previously held the two-way speed record, its 2010 run wasn't the fastest a production car had ever traveled. That title was held by Hennessey with a blistering 270.49 mph (435 km/h) one-way run in a Venom GT at the Kennedy Space Center in 2014.
Koenigsegg has them both covered for now, but Hennessey revealed the Venom GT's successor, the 1,600-bhp Venom F5, at SEMA last week and boldly claimed that it expects its new weapon to break the 300-mph (482 km/h) barrier. So it remains very much a space worth watching.
Check out Koenigsegg's record-breaking run below.
Sources: Koenigsegg (Facebook), TopGear