How to Understand the Transmission of the Koenigsegg Jesko

Man stands next to car and talks about it: it’s a video format you’ve seen a thousand times. It does hit a bit different, though, when the guy’s own name is on the back of the car. Christian Von Koenigsegg is one of a very short list of people who have proven themselves repeatedly at the very pointiest end of the high-performance auto world, and the extraordinary Jesko is a high-octane love letter to his father, who helped him get started in the supercar business.

We’ve written extensively about the 1,600-horsepower Koenigsegg Jesko before. In standard trim, it’s aiming for 300 mph (483 km/h), and the «Jesko Absolut» model ditches the high-downforce rear wing with aspirations of going significantly faster than that. Koenigsegg says it’s the fastest car the company will ever attempt to make, and that’s saying something.

No production car has ever recorded a two-way official 300-mph top speed – well, the SSC Tuatara did, but under highly dodgy circumstances, and when it re-ran its attempt and took the title of world’s fastest car, it only managed 282.9 mph (455.3 km/h).

Likewise, Bugatti released film of its Chiron Super Sport allegedly breaking the 300-mph barrier, but it was an unofficial attempt without proper oversight, and only done in one direction; you’ve got to do it both ways and offer your average speed on a record attempt, to cancel out any potential wind assistance. So the magic 300 is still there to be broken, as is the 500-km/h (310.7-mph) mark.

1,600 horsepower V8 engine is force-fed by huge twin turbochargers, which themselves are force-fed with blasts of compressed air. A combustion centipede, if you will.

Such goals are arbitrary, but the technology that’s gone into creating the Jesko is not. It achieves its monster power output with a roaring 5-liter V8 whose massive twin turbochargers are force-fed by 20-bar (290 psi) air blasts from an onboard compressor to ensure instant response with no turbo lag.

This engine’s crankshaft has no flywheel or clutch on it, removing as much rotational inertia as possible and allowing violently fast changes in RPM. Koenigsegg had to design it this way to accommodate an extraordinary multi-clutch «Ultimate Power On Demand» (UPOD) gearbox that can shift, nearly instantly, from any of the Jesko’s nine speeds to any other. Hopefully with the exception of reverse.

In the new video, Von Koenigsegg talks us around a «very close» pre-production version of the car, pointing out elements of significance like the digital dash integrated into the steering wheel, which stays level as you rotate the wheel. He quietly slags off Gordon Murray’s fan-assisted downforce approach, and that sort of thing is always fun.

Light-speed "ultimate power on demand" transmission leaps between any two gears with almost no delay — Light-speed «ultimate power on demand» transmission leaps between any two gears with almost no delay

And then he drives the thing, hard, demonstrating exactly how that UPOD transmission works from a driver’s standpoint. In essence, if you’re cruising along in top gear and you feel the need to overtake with a level of dramatic flair well beyond «decisive,» you just push the shift lever in further than normal, double-clicking it as it were, and the Jesko will figure out exactly which gear to drop you into for maximal eyeball-flattening. Inducing cardiac episodes in unsuspecting passengers has never been easier.

Enough from me. Hear and experience it with the man himself in the video below. If you’ve got your name on the waiting list for one of the 125 being built, congratulations! Deliveries begin in spring (Northern Hemisphere) of 2022. If you don’t, then polish up the pointy bits on your pitchfork, prepare the torches and get ready to join me. When the revolution comes, I want to track one of these down and take it for a hoon.