This Koenigsegg CCR Still Looks Fresh And Modern 17 Years On

Since it’s one of the younger names in the supercar world, it’s easy to forget that Koenigsegg has been going at the game for a good while. Something like this 17-year-old CCR serves as a decent reminder, especially since it’s not even the Swedish company’s first production car.

That honour goes to the CC8S, a customer-ready version of the CC prototype Koenigsegg had been working on since 1994. After six CC8S units were built, the CCR served as the follow-up in 2004. It doesn’t look like something nearing two decades old, does it?

It helps that Koenigsegg used the same basic shape and the madcap ‘dihedral helix synchro’ doors on many of its models for many years after. If anything, the CCR is better looking than what came next thanks to its smoother lines.

There’s nothing demure about what’s under the skin, though. The ante was upped considerably between the CC8S and CCR projects, with the mid-mounted 4.7-litre V8’s power going from 655bhp to 806 thanks to a switch from single to twin supercharging. The engine has Ford Modular V8 roots, but Koenigsegg changed so much in its quest for more power and a revvier nature that it ended up being a pretty much brand new engine.

All this power made the CCR rather brisk. The top speed was listed as a theoretical 245mph, which was very nearly achieved IRL - a CCR hit 241mph at the Nardo Ring in 2005, just pipping the McLaren F1’s 240.1mph record. Its time as the World’s Fastest Car was short-lived, with the Bugatti Veyron going faster still mere weeks on. But, as we all know, Christian Von Koenigsegg would have the last laugh in Nevada 12 years later.

The CCR you see here is perhaps the most famous of the 14 Koenigsegg made. It’s chassis number 7011, the third CCR produced and the car displayed at the Geneva Motor Show in 2004. It’d be the company’s show car for another couple of years, before being registered new in Germany in May 2006.

This isn’t the kind of car you daily drive, so predictably, usage has been very light. A collector in France owned it until 2009, at which point it had a mere 1150 kilometres (714 miles) on the clock. After that, it spent time as part of “noted collections within Luxembourg and Germany,” RM Sotheby’s says, with the total now at 2347 kilometres. Ahead of its sale at the auction house’s Milan event next month, the CCR was serviced at Esser Automotive in Aachen, Germany.

The estimate is €720,000 - €760,000, which works out around £620,000 - £653,000 going by current exchange rates. Not cheap, then, but considering the Jesko has a starting price of £2.3 million and a single option that costs £340,000, the CCR is a relative bargain. And although it doesn’t have 1578bhp, 800bhp will do, won’t it?