Koenigsegg. The unloved super car?

[firemanSimon]

In my line of work I tend to talk to a number of big company CEO’s. When the usual work talk is done it inevitability turns to ether football or cars. A few are lucky enough to own some crackers. Enzo’s, Lambo’s etc. What has always confused me is the attitude towards Koenigsegg’s. Now while no one has said they hate them. They do seem to be ether disregarded or just plain unloved. Why? It’s the car I one day if I’m lucky to own. It’s always talk of F40’s, F50’s, 599’s, Lamborghini Aventador’s. The minute I bring up the Koenigsegg it’s scoffed at.

It does seem to be the undesirable super car. I love them. The look and the 4.7 Twin supercharged V8 with up to 1000hp! It would seem the Bugatti Veyron is held in higher esteem that the big Segg.

[firemanSimon]

ajf said:

Lack of f1 style gearbox

all the more reason to buy one

[firemanSimon]

Carl_Docklands said:

Why are they un-loved?

It is down to image and they only have themselves to blame.

Look at the state of the factory built Agera in this months evo, Purple with gold plated interior fittings.

Oh so you think they should refuse to build a car for a customer based on YOUR personal taste! If i spent 1m+ on a super car i would expect it painted whatever color i wanted.
bellend!

Edited by firemanSimon on Wednesday 30th January 13:51

[firemanSimon]

Tom73 said:

Pagani started the whole Liberace trend with with their gaudy gold anodizing and overzealous use of stripes and christmas lights. McLaren lined the F1's engine bay with gold foil under the guise that it was required it for heat insulation. Bugatti build porcelain cars. I repeat: porcelain cars.

Koenigsegg up until these last few years refused to deliver their cars in anything other than a one tone paint scheme and pure minimalism but now they're the worst culprit??? There really is no winning with you lot, is there? Clearly you are letting your irrational hate for Koenigsegg (and I'm assuming love for Pagani as these tend to go hand in hand) cloud your judgment.


If there is one thing that have made Koenigsegg appear to be unloved then it's you Pagani fanatics who acts like unpaid (hopefully) social media PR-firms and clutter every Koenigsegg topic ever known to man with unwarranted rubbish about the brand. It's like all of you have this strange synergy where you all look at a Koenigsegg topic and think to yourselves: "Hm. What is the appropriate discussion in this thread? Ah! My useless opinion about Pagani!!"

Edited by Tom73 on Thursday 31st January 21:47

Ooooft get in there!

[firemanSimon]

Tom73 said:

Streetrod said:

Hello Tom, back again I see defending the flag, good on you mate. Look if you read through this thread I think you find that the general consensus is that if we had the money many on here would be beating a path to Koenigseggs door. Most realize now what the company has much too offer now that they are making a much more positive effort on the PR front. The recent Drive channel videos are highlighting their tech and they are also now contributing to treads over on Teamspeed and seem more that willing to answer questions directly which is great. So don’t feel the need to fight their battles, they seem more that capable of doing it themselves.

As for the introduction of Pagani into threads about Egg's why does this upset you so much? Both companies occupy the same space and chase the same customers so it’s obvious that any conversation about one is likely to include a references about the other. Don’t slam Pagani fanboyisim when you are just as much a Koenigsegg fanboy yourself. Both companies are now doing great things and this should be celebrated

As for taste, yes Pagani have built some questionable cars but even you have to admit that the Purple Egg complete with gold interior is pushing it a bit for western eyes. If you are Chinese by the way I apologise if I am calling your taste into question, it all comes down to cultural differences in the end.

So lighten up mate.

Sigh. I don't even..............

Streetrod said:

Oh by the way the last time we conversed you questioned the dynamic ability of the Huayra and its moveable aerodynamic aids. Having now seen the lap time at the Top Gear track do you still stand by those comments?

Oh I'm pleased they incorporated some of the changes I was screaming for. Or at least that they did in the review car. Like this after market looking front splitter and I assume slightly different undertray as well.



Thankfully they didn't listen to your highly educated ideas:

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=8&a...

Tom73 said:

Why substitute a proper front splitter and a protruding diffuser (with INSTRUMENTAL fins) to clean and accelerate flow, for a bunch of flaps that wont work as advertised for too many reasons to mention in this post?

Streetrod said:

Now too the aero which is very misunderstood on this car. First it does not require a front splitter as the design of the nose section already acts line one and produces down force .

Tom73 said:

The nose section does not act like a proper front splitter.

Why? There's two reasons why the length of the front splitter tends to grow with the desired track capability. One, it extends the undertray and the extra length allows the flow to accelerate more. More acceleration in flow equals more venturi effect and downforce. Two, having the front splitters extend as long as possible beyond the wheels gives you better leverage and more surface area for the downforce created by the combination of the venturi effect on the bottom and the dam effect on top. Remove either the venturi effect or the dam effect and you will drastically reduce downforce.

I'm guessing these changes will be made available in all other cars as well and not just the review car? And you and I are now on the same page not that it is a necessity seeing as how Pagani has implemented the changes?


I still wish they would replace those stupid non-functional flaps for something a little more useful though. Active suspension coupled with the review car's undertray and front splitter would work much better.

And of course I wasn't overly pleased about seeing a Zonda driver die in his car with the safety concerns I raised about the poorly designed crash structure but the Pagani boys over here at PH were all quick to blame the driver and drag his corpse through the mud so let's pretend it never happened, shall we? Everything for the brand, right? Oh how mislead I was:

Tom73 said:

The design criteria of a car like the Huayra should be the same as a Formula One car. It should be able to withstand the forces of a 230 mph crash and have the appropriate compression zones to eat some of the energy. You see, carbotanium only slightly improves tension and shear over raw carbon fiber, but it does nothing to aid compression and the tensile and shear strength will be less than just about any given laminate that incorporates raw materials with better tensile and shear strength. As a substitute for carbon fiber alone it's a great material but as a all in one material it's not very good. This is why in the racing and aero industry you laminate carbon fiber with other materials like divinycell, kevlar, polymer or aluminium honeycomb; to get the whole spectrum of tension, shear and compression. You don't do one or the other, you combine them depending on what the structure requires.

This is also why a properly engineered monocoque has non tensile fracture zones where the engine and the front connects with the monocoque. At a high energy impact you want the tension and shear strength to be balanced in such a way that those bits tear off the monocoque so that when it smashes into, say a wall, it only carries the weight and energy of the cockpit. If a supercar has a high energy impact and it doesn't split in two then it's poorly engineered. And watching some of the crash photos of Paganis it's amazing that no one has got seriously hurt yet.

It should look like this

or this

and not like this


(Why do the subframe bend before tearing off?? How come anything in front or behind the cockpit is not disintegrated into small pieces when the forces going through the monocoque are great enough to completely obliterate the subframe? Should a 62 mph crash like the one in the second picture eat away at the all carbon fiber monocoque and almost expose the passanger? Is "impending death" a design criteria?)

As far as the lap time itself it's mostly about the tyres. Right now Pirelli is king and it shouldn't come as a surprise to you since you're currently being lectured over Teamspeed.

http://teamspeed.com/forums/supercars/78235-pagani...

I wouldn't expect anything less than a honest debate from you so I'm a bit surprised you didn't bring it up. Perhaps you forgot - again?

LongLiveTazio said:

I have an untrained eye to lots of things but it isn't just me who's seen plenty of videos about the Huayra to think that the flaps looked slow to respond and notice that it is very different to what other manufacturers with vastly more race and engineering experience have preferred. So until I see evidence of the contrary (beyond airbrake) I will treat it with healthy cynicism, which doesn't seem to me to be unreasonable.

Trust your eyes and common sense, I say... There is really no good way of bettering downforce than with the venturi effect or a proper wing since it's much easier to create lift with a change in flow speed to cause changes in pressure than to simply use the relatively meager dam effect of the Huayra's flaps. This is why the early airplane models of flapping, flat, bird like wings didn't work as well as a proper airfoil. Or why airplanes aren't designed like kites. Whether we're talking wings, the undertray of a race car, a jet engine or something as trivial as a alcohol stove they all use the same principle so it's fairly tried and tested (dry sarcasm). Like I said before in my debate with streetrod linked earlier in this post there are no actual guarantees that the flaps would work as they cause a change in flow. In theory they could actually create a net lift if they slow down the flow too much or create a wake turbulence. There's a reason why aero engineers don't put the flaps at the front of the airfoil/wings and it's not because it's too damn good of a concept for the aero industry. The parameters alone to make it work in theory are mind-boggling and Pagani is not McDonnell Douglas et al.

The question then is why they went through all this trouble of creating non effective flaps to create dam pressure with a potential net lift when they could have used active suspension to optimize roll/contact surface and the venturi effect of the undertray? I'm sure they're fantastic airbrakes and are more than useful in this regard, but to go from that to telling us that this





is a more useful and "innovative" concept than the principles (Bernoulli's principle) of these





... now that's just downright insulting. Someone over at Pagani must've skipped a class or they're consciously being dishonest.

Streetrod said:

The Huayra has been tested over million kilometers with separate testing programs also run by AMG for the engine/gearbox and Bosch on the ESP system that ties into the active aero. So believe me it has been tested, check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmDG6Pf4jfI

It would take them 5 years of 8 hours of continous driving each day at an average 70 km/h to reach 1000000 km. Up until not so long ago there was only the one test mule so you do the math. Surely there's some classic Pagani trickery in there.

Also I'm not sure how highly it speaks of the brand if they need 1000000+ km before they figure out it might be a good idea to add a front splitter.

ok.... what he said

[firemanSimon]

0a said:

I just purchased the latest evo and read the Koenigsegg article. For some reason the car does nothing for me. I don't think Harry communicated anything particularly interesting about it. Perhaps it is the relentless chasing of "the world's fastest" that for me ended and is now closed by the Veyron - big accessible speed (if you have the money), something that was only ever of passing interest and has now been done in my mind, no matter what extra bhp/tonne you give a supercar.

Perhaps I have been brainwashed by other well established supercar brands. However, by contrast I really enjoyed the article on the Venom GT - now that is something to aspire to and clearly made an impact on the writer.

And why allow a road test of a car that looks like it is suitable for the "horrors in the PH classified" thread, not a good idea if you want to build a quality brand.

I enjoyed the latest evo though, so thankyou for reminding me to buy it. The Z4M vs Tuscan article was highly enjoyable. If only Top Gear did a "coupe for £15k" challenge. We miss you TVR!

Evo bores me to tears.