The Artist Behind Exploding Lamborghini NFT Videos Says It'll Pay For More Art

How do you wrap your head around the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut? Well, let's begin with some numbers. Like 1,600 and 1,106. These are the peak outputs, in good old American ponies and stump-pulling pound-feet of torque, respectively, generated by the car's 5.1-liter V-8. Then there's 3,130. That's about how many pounds the 2024 Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut weighs.Gulp!Now do the math. Yep. You don't need to be a computational fluid dynamics mastermind to figure out this Swedish-designed and -engineered hypercar is a seriously fast machine. How fast? Company founder Christian von Koenigsegg says his team hasn't completed physical testing, but computer modeling suggests the Jesko Absolut will have a top speed north of 310 mph.Conventional wisdom suggests it's impossible for a tiny automaker from a country best remembered for stolid Volvos and quirky Saabs, to design, engineer, and produce a fully street-legal car capable of beating the Bugatti Chiron at its own, highly specialized game.But Koenigsegg has a long history of defying conventional wisdom.In Case You Don't KnowChristian von Koenigsegg describes himself as an inventor/entrepreneur. He was, he says, the sort of kid who took apart the family VCR to see how it worked, which it sometimes did when he put it back together.He decided he wanted to build his own car when he was just 6 years old, after watching The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix, a stop-motion short film about an inventor who … builds his own car and beats the world's best with it.Von Koenigsegg founded his first company when he was just 19, selling plastic bags and frozen chicken to Estonia in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse. He founded Koenigsegg Automotive in 1994, when he was just 22.It took eight years, but the 2002 delivery of the Koenigsegg CC8S, a hand-built, carbon-fiber-bodied supercar powered by a 655-hp supercharged 4.7-liter engine based on Ford's modular V-8, to a Swiss customer (who still owns it) was the realization of 6-year-old von Koenigsegg's dream.The JeskoThe new Koenigsegg Jesko is the latest expression of that dream. And we were the first automotive media organization in the world to drive it.By Koenigsegg standards, the Jesko will be a volume car. Koenigsegg Automotive has built just 250 cars in total since 2002, but it plans to build 125 Jeskos during the next two to three years. All are sold, despite their almost $3 million price tag. The Jesko is fully homologated for sale in the U.S., and the first of about 40 cars heading our way is scheduled for production in the third quarter of 2023.Two versions will be offered, the Jesko Attack and the Jesko Absolut. The Attack is intended for better racetrack performance, with stiffer suspension and high-downforce aerodynamics including a large rear wing and the deepest and longest front splitter so far fitted to a Koenigsegg.With all the aero bits in their most aggressive settings, the Jesko Attack allegedly develops 1,760 pounds of total downforce at 155 mph, rising to a maximum of almost 3,100 pounds at speeds exceeding 170 mph.The 2024 Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut is all about raw speed. It eschews the Attack's giant V-shaped rear wing, as well as its front splitter and the ducting through the hood. Two large fins, designed to improve high-speed stability, sprout from the engine cover. A reprofiled, 3.4-inch-longer tail and flush coverings on the rear wheels help reduce drag to 0.28 Cd.Downforce is reduced to about 90 pounds at 155 mph, and to a maximum of 330 pounds, which means the Absolut can run softer suspension and a lower ride height than the Attack, improving everyday ride comfort and usability.Max PowerPowering both Jeskos is a 5.1-liter, twin-turbo V-8 designed and engineered in-house by Koenigsegg. An evolution of the engine originally developed for the Agera, it now features a flat-plane crankshaft milled from a solid steel billet. The crank weighs just 28 pounds and allows the V-8 to rev to 8,500 rpm.New lightweight conrods and pistons were developed to mitigate the increased vibration endemic to flat-plane-crank V-8s. The conrods, though made of steel, tip the scales at just 1.2 pounds each, including bolts, which means they weigh the same as a previous design made of titanium but are stronger. The ceramic-coated pistons weigh just 10.2 ounces each.The cylinder heads, which are cast by Formula 1 supplier Grainger & Worrall, have redesigned intake runners shaped to improve tumble and therefore combustion. The two large turbochargers feature a Koenigsegg-designed air-injection system that pumps short bursts of highly pressurized air into the turbos to get the impellers spinning and reduce lag (this extra air is also said to hasten catalyst lightoff during cold starts).A redesigned fuel injection system now has three injectors per cylinder, two traditional port injectors down by the intake valves and a third injector located in the plenum just above the intake trumpet for each cylinder. Koenigsegg says the extra injector helps deliver cooler and cleaner combustion, which is monitored by what the company claims is the world's first production-car individual in-cylinder pressure monitoring system.Put it all together, and the result is an engine that makes 1,600 hp at 7,500 rpm on E85 biofuel, and 1,280 hp on pump gas. Why the difference? E85's higher octane rating allows higher combustion pressures, says von Koenigsegg, who has long experimented with biofuels.Peak torque output is a hefty 1,106 lb-ft at 5,100 rpm, with no less than 738 lb-ft on tap from 2,700 to 6,170.Never mind that boggling headline E85 horsepower number—even on pump gas, the 5.1liter Koenigsegg twin-turbo V-8, which the company says weighs just 417 pounds, boasts a greater power density than the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport's giant 8.0-liter quad-turbo W-16.Trick TransmissionNo less extraordinary than the engine is the rest of the Jesko's drivetrain. All the power and torque is funneled to the rear wheels via Koenigsegg's ingenious, innovative nine-speed Light Speed Transmission (LST). The LST "makes dual-clutch transmissions look antiquated," von Koenigsegg says, and that's no idle boast.Conventional dual-clutch transmissions work by moving gearsets to preselect what their electronic brains predict will be the next required gear. They then simultaneously close the clutch on that gear while opening the clutch on the gear last used. In the LST, no gearsets move. Instead, all gears in the transmission are engaged constantly, and the combination of gears through which drive is sent to the output shaft is determined by opening and closing six individual clutches within the transmission.The compounding effect of the gearing produces nine forward speeds (reverse is controlled via a seventh clutch), and because the gearsets do not have to move into place, the transmission can switch directly from, say, eighth to fourth gear instantaneously simply by opening and closing the relevant clutches. In a conventional dual-clutch transmission, this would require four separate mechanical operations.Koenigsegg says the LST weighs only 198 pounds (roughly two-thirds the weight of a high-capacity dual-clutch gearbox) and is half the size of the seven-speed Cima automated manual used on the company's Agera. The LST transmission's other benefit is the fact no clutch or flywheel is required on the end of the crankshaft. And as we discovered, you can feel this the moment you touch the Jesko's gas pedal.Inside GameThe cockpit is roomy—the 2024 Koenigsegg Jesko's all-new tub means more legroom and headroom than in previous Koenigseggs—and the trademark wraparound windshield offers outstanding forward visibility. The lightweight quartic steering wheel, flattened at the top and bottom of the rim, is fully adjustable for reach and rake. The pedal box is also adjustable, as are the carbon-fiber-shell seats.Although the 9.0-inch touchscreen looks familiar (it's from the same supplier Volvo uses, though the interface and information displayed are all unique to Koenigsegg), there's no instrument panel in the conventional sense of the term. Instead, there's a 5.0-inch screen attached to the steering-wheel boss that shows all the usual drive-relevant data: revs, speed, gear, drive mode, etc.Turn the wheel, and although the screen moves with it, the graphics remain aligned to the car's vertical axis. And because the steering-wheel spokes never interfere with the view, the essential data remains always visible.Driven to ExtremesPress a button, and the Jesko's doors motor shut, twisting and turning on the company's unique dihedral synchro-helix door hinges. Thumb the start button, and the V-8 cracks into life and settles down to a brisk idle.This is the first complete pre-production Jesko Asbolut, visually and mechanically correct, save for some final tuning for the transmission mapping. It's been warmed up by the test driver. Rain threatens. Koenigsegg's runway test track beckons. We switch from Normal to Racetrack mode (this being a Swedish hypercar, there's also a Wet/Snow mode). Let's go.The Jesko pulls away cleanly, the turbochargers' air-injection system taking care of low-speed lag. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! The traction through the lower gears is immense, helped by the Triplex rear suspension setup, which includes a damper between the top links of the rear control arms to better control squat.The Jesko tracks straight and true as we arrow down the runway. And that engine! It might displace 5.1 liters and have a couple of turbos, but it screams like a naturally aspirated 3.0-liter Ford Cosworth DFV F1 V-8 and feels razor-sharp in its response. From fifth gear through to ninth, the revs build so quickly, you have to click-click-click-click on the upshift paddle pretty much as quickly as you can to stop the engine hitting the rev limiter. There is no flywheel effect. None.The only other modern hypercar engine that feels anywhere near as vivid as this one does past 6,000 rpm is the naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V-12 in the Ferrari Daytona SP3. In fact, Koenigsegg's engine feels even more explosive than Ferrari's V-12, and not just because it makes significantly more power and torque. Rather, it all plays out in a more compressed rev range, the redline being 8,500 rpm whereas the Ferrari will spin to 9,500 rpm.And we're not even getting the full monty: Our Jesko's engine is running on 98 RON from the local gas station rather than E85, which means we're making do with a mere 1,280 hp.Although there is a stubby shifter on the center console, the paddles are really the only way you can keep up with the engine if you choose to shift manually on a full-commando acceleration run. Apart from some shift shock on the third-fourth change—more software work is underway to eliminate it—the shifts were smooth and super-quick.However, pushing through the detent on the center shifter activates the LST's party trick, UPOD (Ultimate Power On Demand) mode. This allows the transmission to skip ratios for ultimate response. Stabbing the gas in seventh gear in UPOD saw the transmission switch instantly to fourth gear and the Jesko lunge for the horizon.Handling ProwessPowertrain aside, the 2024 Koenigsegg Jesko's agility and stability are also mighty impressive. The car feels incredibly light on its feet, the low rotational mass of the hollow carbon-fiber steering wheel complementing the low inertia of a hypercar that weighs about as much as a Honda Civic.Response from the front axle is superb, as is the feedback through the steering. There's noticeable roll on the change of direction, but you can feel exactly what's going on where the front tires meet the tarmac. Active rear-wheel steering, which can turn the wheels up to 3 degrees in either direction, helps the rear end track faithfully. You can go to power surprisingly early without pushing the nose wide or making the rear end feel squirrely.The brakes, giant carbon-ceramic rotors measuring 16.1 inches up front and 15.6 at the rear and clamped by calipers of Koenigsegg's own design, feel utterly indestructible. Nail the brake pedal, and the Jesko simply stops, even from big triple-digit speeds. This is a hypercar you can drive with your fingertips and toes, the Jesko Absolut a deft and delicate device despite its size and its enormous power and speed.What's It Mean?Christian von Koenigsegg has been on a remarkable journey since founding his car company 28 years ago. Despite having no formal training as an automotive engineer or designer, he's become a genuine auteur automaker, more directly hands on in the creation of his cars than Enzo Ferrari or Ferruccio Lamborghini ever were, and more driven to explore left-field technical solutions compared to his modern-day hypercar-as-art contemporary, Horacio Pagani.Driving the 2024 Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut is like drawing back the curtain and getting a glimpse of what's going on inside inventor/entrepreneur Christian von Koenigsegg's head. And it's a truly extraordinary place.2024 Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut Specifications PRICE $2,840,000 LAYOUT Mid-engine, RWD, 2-pass, 2-door coupe ENGINE 5.1L/1,280-hp (1,600-hp on E85)/1,106-lb-ft twin-turbo port-injected DOHC 32-valve V-8 TRANSMISSION 9-speed seven-clutch auto CURB WEIGHT 3,100 lb (mfr) WHEELBASE 106.3 in L x W x H 190.7 x 79.9 x 47.6 in 0-60 MPH 2.5 sec (MT est) EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON Not yet rated EPA RANGE (COMB) 228 miles (est, gasoline) ON SALE Now Show All

You've got a Tesla orbiting the sun, you've got Rivian-investing Jeff Bezos blasting into the upper atmosphere in an incongruous cowboy hat, and now there are Space Bentleys? Thankfully, not quite. No one's strapping a Bentayga super luxury SUV to a Delta Heavy anytime soon, given our back-of-napkin orbital payload cost calculations (using the common rough estimate of $10,000 to get a pound of anything into low Earth orbit). Instead, you've got a very earthbound Bentayga worked over by Mulliner that is inspired by space. This one is destined for Florida's Space Coast, which puts its theme in a whole new light. The vehicle was commissioned by Bentley Orlando for a customer whose enthusiasm for space is equalled by pockets deep enough to have Mulliner work over a Bentayga Speed with their favorite frontier in mind. Cheap compared to spaceflight, surely, but not chump change by any standards.Mulliner started off with a coat of Cypress green accented with Blackline Specification blacked-out brightwork and Orange Flame accents. Inside, custom sill plates provide a slice of the Solar System, while the rest of the interior is done up in Beluga and Porpoise—colors, thankfully, not exotic leather made out of highly intelligent cetaceans. Orange accents brighten up what is otherwise a dusky cabin.This is just one of many commissions Mulliner has taken on lately. In 2022 alone, Mulliner has done 100 of these one-offs, and last year the division marked its 1,000th bespoke creation in its seven years of operation. With this sort of income, perhaps in a few years Mulliner will be able to do a custom New Glenn interior for some grossly wealthy Blue Origin customer willing to front $28 million just to experience microgravity for a few minutes.

lamborghini countach Full Overview"If you will it, Dude, it is no dream!" So said John Goodman's character Walter Sobchak, quoting Theodor Herzl, in the Coen Brothers' classic The Big Lebowski.The line echoed around my noggin as I drove Lamborghini Countach VIN ZA9C005A0KLA12085—the final one built—out of the Sant'Agata Bolognese factory gates. As a little boy I once saw an orange Countach parked on some gray cobblestones in Old Montreal. My father was kind enough to let me stand there, jaw on those same cobblestones, as gobsmacked as a 9-year-old human can be. Was it 10 minutes, 20, half an hour? I don't know.I do know it was long enough that the memory helps guide my thinking, my career, my life to this day. How could such a shape, let alone on a car, exist? Moreover, how could I be standing next to it? Most crucially, how would I get myself behind that steering wheel? Because suddenly, right there and then, I had a pretty good and clear notion of what I wanted to do with my life. Whatever I'd become, cars like this Arancio Livrea-colored Lamborghini would be involved.We can't go any further without recalling the 1987 Morley Safer 60 Minutes segment about the Countach.Well, technically it's about the entire Lamborghini brand, but in 1987 the company was defined wholly by the mighty wedge-shaped supercar. Sorry, Jalpa fans, but you know it's true. My father was a CBS News junkie—Walter Cronkite was God, Dan Rather was the pope, and 60 Minutes the Vatican—meaning I had the episode on videotape. I've seen the piece at least 50 times. For my money, the segment is the singular greatest piece of automotive journalism extant. If you've not seen it, please pause now, Google "60 Minutes Countach," and report back. I'll wait.Amazing, no? Great reporting and a solid 1980s overdose aside, what a magnificent machine. Three years earlier I'd seen one, and since then I'd been allowed to subscribe to the big four monthly American automotive buff books so I could go on and read all about it. But Safer's video was the first time I'd seen and heard one in action.So imagine being a lifetime Countach enthusiast and decades later driving out of the factory behind the wheel of the last one ever made. I was freaking out. Can this be real? Is life just a dream you really can will into coming true? I should probably leave out the parts about the rain, the miserable electric seats (a later Countach development) that meant even at just 5-foot-11 my head was against the roof, no power steering and at least three turns lock to lock, an 80-pound clutch pedal, the perma-fogged windshield, the lack of noticeable brakes—essentially all the usual Countach accoutrement and mishegoss. I didn't care a lick about that list of negatives, not even an iota divided by a scintilla. I smiled for four hours straight until I had to return the car, and I kept on smiling until just about three minutes ago.The Countach was 17 years old by the time 1990 arrived. The 25th Anniversary model was released two years earlier to celebrate the founding of the company, and rumor has it the Countach's successor, the Diablo, was supposed to make its debut that same year. However, for a variety of reasons—like its design being rejected by Lee Iacocca, CEO of Chrysler, which owned Lamborghini—the Diablo was delayed for two years.Although I doubt the company was aware of it at the time, it had a young superstar designer on the payroll, one Horacio Pagani. It tasked him with revising the aging supercar for one last campaign. Mechanically identical to the 5000 QV, also known as Quattrovalvole, the 449-hp 5.2-liter quad-cam 48-valve V-12 was now fed via larger, more effective, and newly straked airboxes. The rear brakes were fed with straked ducts. Did Pagani make the 25th Anniversary model look too much like a Ferrari Testarossa? Perhaps. No matter, however, as that car was the bestseller among all Countaches.I had waited a lifetime to visit Sant'Agata Bolognese. This fact surprised the people I've come to know over the years at Lamborghini. In fact, I've perhaps become too friendly, to the point the company's design boss, Mitja Borkert, once even hand-drew me an invitation to visit any time I liked. I've visited Ferrari at Maranello and toured Pagani's atelier twice, but for whatever reason I'd never made it to Lamborghini headquarters. On my most recent prototype test drive (of the new Huracán Tecnica a few months ago) with former technical boss Maurizio Regianni, I asked if it were possible to perhaps also visit the factory. "Yes, absolutely," he said. And while I was there, is there something special I'd be interested in driving?Oh, yes.Now, here's the thing: I've driven several Countaches. They're not very good cars. Sacrilege, but they just aren't. They're slower than you imagine, clumsy, ungainly, difficult to see out of, temperamental, and uncomfortable, the latter especially if it's hot outside. Yet the Countach somehow remains my favorite supercar. Just look at it. Still, I'm aware of the cars in the Lamborghini Museum at the factory: Miura, Espada, LM002, Diablo GT, Reventón, Sesto Elemento, and Veneno, just to name a few I'd be interested in driving. But Lamborghini exists today because of the Countach.Yes, of course, the Miura is very pretty, and the LM002 is the Rambo Lambo, and the Diablo is rad, and all of that. But it is the insanity of the Countach, its improbability, its outrageousness, its unlikeliness, the extremism of its design, its overt thuggishness that has attracted droves of fans to the marque. The Countach specifically, and the spirit of the Countach in general, is why Chrysler bought Lamborghini, and why VW did the same about a decade later. What's this spirit entail? Just the promise that the world would be a less interesting place if Lamborghini weren't around.So even though I had other options, it was a no-brainer to go with the last Countach. Like Safer did 35 years earlier, I'd roll through the factory gates inside of Marcello Gandini's design masterpiece. Except I'd be the one driving, not legendary Lamborghini test driver Valentino Balboni.Years ago, I was stuck in horrific L.A. traffic with Balboni inside a Gallardo LP 550-2 Valentino Balboni Edition. We'd run out of things to say about his namesake car, so I asked him what it was like the first time he laid eyes on a Countach. "Ah, the Countach!" he said. "Impossible! Nobody believed it was a car."He explained that when the prototypes ran around Sant'Agata's vineyard areas years before, it was like seeing a spaceship because nothing on earth looked like it. "The power! The steering! The handling! The brakes …" he trailed off, then shrugged and said, "Well, not so much the brakes," while making the sign of the cross. But his smile indicated my question had taken him to a happy place.There's apparently only one road in the province of Modena, Italy, that the local manufacturers consider worth driving on, and I've now taken a Pagani, a Ferrari, and the final Countach there to "make photos." It's a beautiful country road that wends its way up a hill. It's minimally trafficked, and you can get up to some good fun; I almost crashed a Pagani Huayra there because I tried to do something stupid.I nearly stuffed the final Countach there, too, because it was pouring rain and I could not see out of it. The photographer I was transporting from location to location kept laughing at the situation's absurdity. The only way I could see out of the windshield was for him to lean forward and wipe the glass with a rag. Once he was out of the vehicle, I was hosed. Everything you've ever read about how miserable and weak the Countach's HVAC system is true, yet the defroster is even worse than the A/C.The photos, however, as you can see, are outstanding. Silver is normally a dull color for a Lamborghini, but on wet pavement with vibrant Italian greens in the background, it pops. Looking at these images now, it's easy to see how much it was worth working our way through the adverse conditions. None of it mattered, save for the part that I was driving a Lamborghini Countach around Italy. That smile I mentioned earlier was undefeatable: I even smiled when I realized I had to remove my shoes to drive it, and when it became known the Countach isn't exactly waterproof, as evidenced by my soaking-wet socks. None of it mattered.The car, despite all its quirks, is perfect. Perfectly flawed, perfectly ridiculous, perfectly alien. Yet perfect all the same. We all collectively spend so much time these days worrying about measurements—a fraction of a second here, how much power a motor makes there. I've had people tell me they won't consider buying a certain car because it doesn't have Apple CarPlay. CarPlay? The Countach doesn't have a trunk!Honestly, does every car need to be a Nürburgring all-star? Look at the soon-to-be-released 992 Porsche 911 GT3 RS. Yes, it looks extreme, but everything is there for a performance reason. On the Countach? The famous rear wing on most other examples actually slows the car down. Believe it or not, despite its weaknesses and probably because of them, as well, the last Countach ever made is joy on wheels.This Countach, like all of them, is an attitude, a frame of mind, a monument to what could be and really what should be. You're just happier around it than not. Are automobiles art? Can they ever really be art? A few can, and the Countach is one of the rare ones that would bring its owner as much joy bolted to their wall as it would parked in their garage. The car is simply a rolling wow. Remember, the name comes from the word contacc, a Piedmontese interjection used when a person is shocked and astonished.Maybe you think the car and its legend are beyond overhyped after so many years. But indeed all this time later, following all the cars, supercars, and hypercars I've been around and driven in my career, there's only one that returns me to the genesis of my infatuation. Only one that takes me back to my a priori love of automobiles, to an undoubtedly simpler and happier time.Of course, the world today is filled with wonderful machines, but how many make you say, "Wow!" in the same tone of voice as the Countach? Not many, and even fewer cars remain a dream no matter how many times you find yourself fortunate enough to drive one.Looks good! More details?