Koenigsegg races off with Bugatti's record

The Koenigsegg Agera RS during its record-breaking run on the Vandel Airfield in Denmark. (Koenigsegg Automotive)

A Koenigsegg Agera RS has just managed to go from 0-400km/h and back to standstill in just 36.44 seconds.

The new time, set at Vandel Airfield in Denmark with Koenigsegg test driver Niklas Lilja behind the wheel, is a full 5.52 seconds faster than the current Guinness World Record time. That was set by the Bugatti Chiron in September in the run up to the Frankfurt International Motor Show.

More impressive still is that while the Chiron has an 8-liter 16-cylinder engine, four turbochargers and 1500hp on tap plus the weight of the entire Volkswagen Group behind it, the Agera RS only has a 5-liter twin turbo V8 under its carbon fiber shell, capable of outputting 1360hp. And is built in a tiny facility in Sweden by a tiny company headed up by a single man with a singular vision, Christian von Koenigsegg.

"It makes me so proud, so happy and excited to see what we have achieved as a team with the Agera RS. A result like this does not just happen," he said of the new record. "It may have only taken a few hours of driving to complete this run, but we cannot overlook all of the work that went into creating the car in the first place."

And the new record may not stand for very long. The Agera RS is by no means the fastest or most powerful car that Koenigsegg currently builds. In fact, the only reason the 0-400-0 run was attempted with the car in the first place was to appease a client. The car used for breaking the record is about to be shipped to its owner in the US, but he wanted some independent test carried out so that he could verify the car's veracity when compared with Lamborghinis, Ferraris and, of course, Bugattis.

Indeed, when it's ready, von Koenigsegg has confirmed he and his team will be heading back out on to the track with the Regera. It does have the same 1500hp on tap that the Bugatti Chiron boasts, and early tests show that the car can accelerate from 0-400km/h in under 20 seconds. During its record-breaking run, the Agera RS took 26.88 seconds to hit 400km/h.

However, Bugatti isn't finished, either. It has confirmed that it will be heading out to the track early next year to set a new record for the world's fastest production car. That accolade is currently held by the Bugatti Veyron (in SS specification), the model the Chiron is replacing and a car that managed to hit 431.072km/h.