The Koenigsegg Agera R is hand built by craftsmen in Sweden. Every example appears to be a work of art, and reviews tend to say that too. But one former owner says it's the opposite. In fact, he says the Agera R he was buying was "a hunk of shit." Koenigsegg doesn't see it that way.


A bit of controversy erupted in the last 24 hours on the Luxury4Play forums. It started out innocently enough: One user just posted a picture and said he liked the way the Koenigsegg Agera looked.

(UPDATE: That thread is now closed. Koenigsegg shot me an email about it: "we haven't closed the thread, someone else has. People seem to think that we can control the forum since we are sponsor, but that is not the case." Interesting)


I saw the Agera at the top of this post at Pebble Beach last year. It was a customer car sold to BC (real name Ben), a forum member on Luxury4Cars and a guy with a huge stable of cars. "I take my cars everywhere," BC told me. "It's a benefit to them for me to have one." From a publicity standpoint, that makes perfect sense.

When one poster went on to note that five of the very limited collection of cars were for sale, BC jumped in with an interesting post:

By all appearances, BC is a respected and active member of the Luxury4Play community. And as you can see in his signature, he has a ton of pretty amazing supercars. When pushed for details, he refuses to comment. But then Koenigsegg's PR team joins in:


The post, if you might notice, was edited by BC, who is a moderator at Luxury4Play. It appears to just be the bold faced red type that has been added. He told me those were "corrections and his real thoughts." I asked if he thought that hurt his credibility, and he said no.

This is what the post originally said:


BC repeatedly says he won't comment, but then something changes, because he unleashes a tirade on Koenigsegg's promises to him and the build quality of the products. According to BC, they had agreed together to keep the problems quiet and to keep him out of it, but it seems that Koenigsegg's "putting words in [BC's] mouth" was the last straw.


And this is when he drops the biggest (or most quotable) bomb of it all:


That's right. BC says that the Koenigsegg Agera, one of the fastest cars in the world, something handbuilt in a workshop in Sweden, and one of the rarest cars in the world, is a 'hunk of shit.' Quite the opinion of a car most people have been raving about for years. BC did tell me that he's "driven everything" and is "a bit jaded."

BC also forgets his earlier modesty in the thread, because he keeps railing on Christian von Koenigsegg and his company. As he gets into details, BC says he would be the youngest Agera owner and that he ordered the car at Pebble Beach in 2011 with delivery scheduled for the next spring. Like a lot of bespoke supercar deliveries, it got delayed a number of times.



BC isn't totally derogatory towards the car. He does think it looks awesome, but a lot of the details needed work. In my conversation with BC, he said that CvK made promises he couldn't keep and didn't follow up, which left CvK with little credibility to him. "I don't think Christian is a bad guy," BC told me. "He just doesn't know what to do."


In the end, BC never took delivery of the car and Koenigsegg bought it back from him.

I sent an email to Koenigsegg for a statement on the matter. This is their detailed response to BC's experience: