How Much Horsepower The Hybrid Koenigsegg Chimera Has & What It Costs

The Koenigsegg Chimera has got to be the rarest production car from the Swedish hypercar maker. It's also a hybrid, but not in an electrified form like the Toyota Prius. In Greek mythology, the "chimera" is a fire-breathing female monster with the head of a lion, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. Using the less terrifying definition, it could refer to an illusion or an impossible dream.

As it turns out, the Koenigsegg Chimera is all that and more. Commissioned by former rally driver and FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the Chimera is an Agera RS with an engine from the Jesko and a gearbox from the Koenigsegg CC850. Moreover, the FIA president fell in love with the paddle shifters in the Jesko, so he asked Koenigsegg to add those to the Chimera as well.

The result is an Agera RS with a Jesko-derived 5.0-liter twin-turbocharged V8 engine, a six-speed gated manual gearbox with a conventional clutch pedal from the CC850, and a nine-speed Koenigsegg Light Speed Transmission with paddle shifters, all while tipping the scales at 2,855 lbs. That's about 220 lbs. lighter than the Jesko, which is impressive given that it has two gearboxes.

The fire-breathing Koenigsegg Agera RS Chimera produces 1,280 horsepower on regular pump gas. But if you feed it with E85 fuel, the twin-turbo V8 unlocks 1,600 horsepower. It has more horses than the two-of-a-kind CCXR Tevita and is rarer, too.

Pricing is often undisclosed for ultra-rare, one-off renditions of supercars or hypercars. Unfortunately, the Koenigsegg Chimera falls into this category. But since it's a one-off creation, you can bet that Mohammed Ben Sulayem spent a pretty penny for his Chimera.

When the Agera RS debuted in 2015, the base price was $2.5 million and it had the reputation of leaving a Bugatti Veyron in the dust. Meanwhile, the Chimera project took three years to complete since the car needed updated electronics, software, controllers, powertrain mounts, harnesses, and suspension components in order to accommodate newer hardware.

Company founder Christian von Koenigsegg said starting from scratch would be more economical than unearthing engineering solutions to make a retrofit project like the Chimera work. We can only wonder about the cost of all the hours spent on fusing three Koenigsegg hypercars in one. Considering the ultra-rare CCXR Trevita started at around $4.8 million, the Chimera is a unicorn worthy of an unofficial eight to $10 million price tag — pocket change for a man who reputably has a multi-million dollar auto collection.