Koenigsegg built 25 Agera RS. Three of them were turned into the Koenigsegg Agera RSR, and all three went to customers in Japan. One of them was sitting on the polished floor at BINGO Sports in Tokyo, wearing a dealer plate instead of a registration, and it was the first thing we pointed the camera at. We spent four months in Japan last year, and this is the second batch of photos from that trip.
Before the cars: Gentle Monster's robot faces
The first frame of this set has no car in it at all. Inside a Gentle Monster store in Tokyo, the eyewear brand's installation of giant robotic faces, with the machinery showing through the backs of the heads, stops everyone who walks past. It set the tone for a trip where the strangest things kept turning up next to the fastest.
The Agera RSR at BINGO Sports
You can tell it from a regular Agera RS at a glance. The wing doesn't sit on posts from below; it hangs from swan-neck mounts on top, the system Koenigsegg first used on the One:1, and the endplate is signed "RSR" in copper script. The roof scoops are shorter than the RS's, so the targa panel can still be taken off and stored in the nose. Power is the same 1,160 bhp from the twin-turbo 5.0-litre V8. This one is teal over bare carbon, with copper pinstripes and copper splitter tips.
We've ridden in an Agera RS before, in Quebec, and it rearranged our idea of fast: riding shotgun with Olivier Benloulou. Seeing one of the three RSRs parked indoors, quietly, was a different kind of thrill.
Source: Top Gear: Attention Koenigsegg spotters, it's the new Agera RSR.
Red, in the window
Through the glass, the same night: the louvred tail of a red Lamborghini and a red Ferrari sports-racer in 1960s P-car style, a white roundel with the number 3 on its nose. Reflected behind them, a Ferrari F40 on its five-spoke wheels. BINGO is where Tokyo's collector cars change hands, and we've stood outside its window before: a Lexus LFA next to a Toyota 2000GT.
A LaFerrari draws a crowd
Winter sun, bare trees, and a red Ferrari LaFerrari parked at the kerb with its door raised. Ferrari's V12 hybrid hypercar was built in a run of 499 coupés, and in Tokyo it still stops grandparents, children and photographers in the same way.
Night shift: S15 and Century
A yellow Nissan Silvia S15 in a busy shopping street, with a Rocket Bunny ducktail, stretched arches and polished deep-lip wheels, and a silver S15 parked right behind it. Two S15s at one kerb is still a normal night in Tokyo. Around the corner, the other end of Japanese motoring: the Toyota Century SUV, the tall version of Japan's chauffeur car, glowing blue in a side street. If you know the saloon, our Century V12 story has the family history.
Ginza, a sunset and a kei truck
A silver first-generation Honda NSX rolling away from us down Suzuran-dori in Ginza, its full-width tail light glowing between the shop signs. A Toyota Hiace and a JPN Taxi heading into the low sun. And one from Fukuoka: a blue Honda Acty kei truck, Fukuoka plates, with vines growing through its wipers, and a red and a yellow sports car under covers behind it. Every country has cars going back to nature. Japan just does it with better trucks.
The one that got away
The last frame is blurred, and not by us. That is a security guard's hand, stepping in to stop us photographing a special-edition Ferrari SF90 parked underground. We kept the shot anyway: in Tokyo, some of the rarest cars come with a bodyguard.
Photos: One Breath Pictures.
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