I was watching a YouTube video of Jay Leno’s Garage and he had Christian von Koenigsegg on the show discussing one of his cars, the Regera. The fastest street legal car in the world (at least at that time in 2018).
Koengisegg said of the engine in his car that it is an, “All aluminum, five liter V8, double overhead camshaft, four valves per cylinder, dry sump lubrication. It’s actually the world’s most downsized, fully homologated core engine.”
Ok…I know some of those words but what is dry sump lubrication and a fully homologated core engine?
If you want to see the bit I was watching I queued the video below to the right spot (about 30 seconds before the quote).
“Dry sump lubrication” I understand, but I can’t explain it better than Wikipedia. It’s basically a type of lubrication system used in high performance and racing cars to make sure that the engine isn’t starved for oil in prolonged high-g turns. The downside is that it uses expensive oil pumps and a lot of oil, so most cars on the road don’t have dry sumps.
“Fully homologated core engine” is a term I have never heard in my more than 30 years of auto fandom, reading about cars, driving cars and repairing cars. Based on the rest of what he said in that snippet, I think he means that the car produces a lot of power per liter. This is usually referred to a “specific output.” It’s easy to calculate - take the amount of horsepower it produces and divide it by the displacement of the engine. So a 1300 hp 5.0 Liter Regera engine has a specific output of 260 hp/L. That’s pretty impressive for a road car (or really anything short of a Formula 1 car or top fuel dragster). It would top this list, which is apparently not that comprehensive.
It sounds to me like Car Guy in the video speaks English as a second language, and he isn’t quite fluent, and is misusing some terms, which makes his statements a bit confusing.
But what it seems to me he’s saying is that the car’s engine is fully approved as a standardized production line model for racing series that require that (homologated). Among those cars, its engine is the most compact and efficient, in terms of HP per liter (“downsized”).
I think by “core” engine, he means standard, unmodified production engine.
So the standard engine in the car is the world’s most compact and efficient standard production engine which has been fully approved for racing series that require standard production cars and components.
Follow-up: I just googled the quoted term “fully homologated core engine.” The only place it comes up is in two articles about the Koenigsegg segment on Jay Leno’s garage. I’m convinced it’s either a term Mr. Koenigsegg invented and uses exclusively or it’s something dumb a nervous guy said while he was being interviewed for a segment by a mega-famous, superstar car expert and potential customer. Jay Leno asks him to clarify what he said (because it sounds like nonsense) but Mr. Leno focuses on “downsized” rather than the “homologation” aspect. Mr. Koenigsegg does not seem to be talking about “homologation” in terms of approval for racing and I’m pretty sure that Mr. Leno would have known that, but he didn’t want to make the whole interview a deposition grilling Koenigsegg about this term. The surprising part is that he didn’t edit it out of the segment.
A few minutes later in the video Jay uses “homologated” to mean that the car has passed all required certifications to be street legal (including emissions and crash testing), shortly after mentioning that some hypercars never get certified despite the maker’s promises.
I don’t know much about it but I suspected that homologated is related to the O in GTO. Looking it up in Wikipedia, sure enough:
The name, which was DeLorean’s idea, was inspired by the Ferrari 250 GTO, the successful race car. It is an Italianabbreviation for Gran Turismo Omologato (“grand tourer homologated”), which means officially certified for racing in the grand tourer class.[1] The Pontiac GTO was never certified as a Grand Tourer race car.
For this particular car the answer seems to be that the core engine is based on a Ford Racing engine. One that Ford use and probably sell commercially for race cars. Ford Racing would have homologated the engine for use in various racing classes.
The core engine will need all the ancillaries added before it will run. Maybe the core engine includes the engine management computer I have no idea. But Koengisegg is basically saying he is using a proper race engine modified for street use.
That includes retaining use of a dry sump, rather than a more conventional sump.
Given the tiny numbers of cars made this makes a great deal of sense. McLaren do something similar with their street cars. The V8 they use is based on a race design. However they do have GT3 homologated cars in their lineup. So you can go racing in a 720S in GT3 spec. Koengisegg don’t have such a car. The engine may be race derived but the car is for the road.
In the GT3 class you do have a lot of manufacturers that make their own engines Ferrari, Mercedes, Lamborghini, and of course Porsche. But designing an engine is not for the faint hearted.
“Homologation” is absolutely a thing in motorsports. I am just not aware of any sanctioning body that has homologated the Regera, or indeed any racing series in which it has competed. It’s a street car.
I think @Marvin_the_Martian has it right. Mr. Koenigsegg is using “homologated” to mean that it has been certified for street use. I haven’t heard that term used that way but Mr. Koenigsegg is Swedish and maybe Swedes or Europeans use the word that way. Perhaps it’s just my own blind spot because Mr. Leno apparently used it too.
The Koenigsegg corporate website calls the Koenigsegg V-8, “the most downsized homologated production ICE [internal combustion engine] in the world, with 220hp per liter (using regular pump gas).” That’s similar to what Mr. Koenigsegg said in the interview so my theory that it was an awkward or dumb mistake doesn’t pan out. However, it seems to emphasize that Mr. Koenigsegg is saying that the Regera has the highest specific output production car engine in the world. Nothing on that page talks about motorsports homologation.
I am still not certain why Mr. Koenigsegg specified “core engine” but I think he may be distinguishing in the interview between the “core” internal combustion engine and the electric motors that are part of the Regera’s hybrid system. The electric motors add hundreds more horsepower to the car’s total output. When he says “core engine,” he is referring to the output of the ICE engine only.
This article provides some background to one Koenigsegg engine’s heritage. It seems it is indeed derived from the Ford 5.0l Coyote, but has shifted so far to only have a small number of parts in common. Counting by parts can be misleading of course. A bolt counts the same as the crankshaft in this metric.
There are homologated versions of the Coyote for racing, but using the word for this engine is a significant stretch.
