Twenty years after Koenigsegg launched its first production supercar, the CC8S, it’s unveiled a spiritual successor called the CC850. It isn’t just a re-bodied Jesko though, as this new hypercar has a lot of new features that are all its own.
The world premiere of the new CC850 began with founder Christian Von Koenigsegg rolling up to the venue in an original CC8S. He talks us through the incredible history that the brand has had since it launched and mentions the fact that the Jesko has been sold out for some time. The new CC850 will be the next hypercar to hit the production line.
Shaped very similarly to the original CC8S, the CC850 is what Koenigsegg calls a follow-up or continuation car. That similar shape follows what the founder calls the timeless design of the original car. The 50 in CC850 signifies the fact that only 50 will be built and we’d be shocked if they don’t sell out incredibly fast because, among other new features, this car has a one-of-a-kind manual transmission.
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That gearbox is something that Koenigsegg calls the TWMPAFMPC or The World’s Most Powerful And Fastest Manual Production Car. Koenigsegg highlights how hard it is to make a manual hypercar these days due to regulation and other factors. This isn’t a flappy paddle situation or even a sequential manual. Koenigsegg really pushed the idea that this behaves and feels just like a traditional stick shift. You can feel the interaction with the clutch disc in your leg as you interact with the pedal and you can feel the gears in your hand as you operate the gated shifter.
This gearbox is the same as the Lightspeed one found in other Koenigsegg cars but it’s been adapted for use as a six-speed manual. The Lightspeed transmission has nine gears though, so Koenigsegg has found a way to provide different gear ratios based on the type of driving you’re engaged in.
The innovation is called the KESS, or Koenigsegg Engaged Shift System. The brand even says that you can stall it or do a burnout just like in a normal manual transmission. What’s interesting is that you can also just put the whole thing in automatic. It sounds like this might be the very best iteration of this sort of tech that we’ve ever heard of.
Mind you, the new hypercar isn’t just about the transmission. Koenigsegg says that the CC850 develops 1,385 horsepower (1,032 kW) and 1,021 lb-ft (1,385 Nm) of torque when fueled with E85 and that it weighs just 3,053 pounds (1,385 Kg). Sure, it’s not as powerful as the Jesko but that’s due to smaller turbos that result in zero turbo lag according to Koenigsegg. We can’t wait to see how it accelerates and behaves on the track.