A supremely rare, multimillion-dollar Koenigsegg CCXR Special Edition originally built for the Qatari royal family was wrecked in Mexico City over the weekend, according to witness accounts and photos posted on social media.
Pictures show the 249-mph hypercar at a dead stop on the side of the Paseo de la Reforma, a major avenue that crosses the middle of Mexico’s capital, immobilized by heavy front-end damage. Jagged, gaping holes can be seen in the carbon fiber bodywork. One of the rear wheels sits tilted at a grotesque angle. Curious onlookers gather round and stare at the car like a crashed spaceship before it’s eventually hauled away on a flatbed.
The cause of the accident, which took place on Sunday, hasn’t been released—though if it was a single-car crash, you can bet it involved a potent combination of less-than-ideal road conditions, unsuitable tires, and good ol’ fashioned speed. Considering the Koenigsegg CCXR Special Edition has a twin-supercharged 4.8-liter V8 shoving 1,017 horsepower to the rear wheels, it’s frankly impressive that the car’s stayed intact this long anyway.
The owner of the Koenigsegg was reportedly uninjured. All things considered, it’s a far happier outcome than the last time a Koenigsegg CCX met its match in Mexico; in 2016, two men were critically injured when their CCX hit a curb at speed and rolled multiple times. The car was completely destroyed.
Even if it wasn’t lying in a crumpled heap on the side of a major boulevard, it would be hard to miss this particular CCXR, whose striking turquoise livery inside and out is a signature of the Al-Thani royal family of Qatar. Built in 2009, the so-called “Special One” gained a measure of viral fame the following summer when it was booted by a traffic cop outside Harrod’s department store in London, which the Al-Thanis had also recently purchased.
The family sold the car in 2011, and according to Koenigsegg Registry, it passed between a few high-end Middle Eastern car dealerships with an asking price hovering around $1 million in today’s money. Even the fastest cars can’t outrun depreciation. Its current owner finally bought the CCXR Special Edition in August of 2018, shipped it to Mexico, and started an Instagram account for it that looks surprisingly tragic in retrospect.
Koenigsegg built just two CCXR Special Editions as a final send-off for the car that vaulted the small automaker from relative obscurity into the top tier of the high-performance industry. In addition to that superlative V8, Koenigsegg’s first internally-developed motor, these Special Edition cars gained a Formula 1-type paddle-shift sequential transmission and even slipperier carbon aero work that pushed nearly 800 pounds of downforce over 150 mph.
With all that pedigree, even this painful accident isn’t likely to take the Special One off the road for good. Koenigsegg is known to make a few interesting changes when reassembling its crashed cars – don’t be surprised to see this rare bird fly faster than ever in the future.