A Koenigsegg Regera With No Gearbox and $1 Million in Options Heads to Mecum's First Nashville SaleBackfire NewsEL PuckettFri, September 11, 2026 at 2:23 PM UTCAdd us on GoogleA Koenigsegg Regera With No Gearbox and $1 Million in Options Heads to Mecum's First Nashville SaleKoenigsegg builds hypercars with eye-watering power figures and even more eye-watering order sheets, but the 2019 Regera crossing the block at Mecum's brand-new Nashville sale on September 26 makes its case a different way: this is a car that skipped the gearbox entirely, and its original buyer still found more than $1,000,000 worth of ways to option it up.One of Eighty, One of FiveChassis YT9NN1U16KA007226 is lot S197 at Mecum's first-ever Nashville Superspeedway auction in Lebanon, Tennessee. Per Mecum's own listing, it's one of just 80 Regeras Koenigsegg built at its Angelholm, Sweden factory between 2016 and 2022, and one of only five finished with both the aerodynamic Ghost Package and the Environmental Power Upgrade that lets the V8 run on E85. The exterior is a Candy Apple Red-tinted carbon fiber body over a Burgundy Desiato leather interior, riding on Tresex AirCore carbon fiber wheels and stopped by four-wheel ventilated ceramic brakes. Mecum's listing pegs the factory options alone at over $1,000,000, on top of whatever Koenigsegg charged for the car itself.The Transmission That Isn't OneThe Regera's signature engineering trick is what Koenigsegg calls Direct Drive, a single fixed gear ratio connecting the engine and electric motors straight to the rear wheels, with no multi-speed gearbox involved. A conventional car needs a stack of gear ratios because a combustion engine only makes usable power across a narrow rev range; electric motors don't have that problem, since they produce full torque from a dead stop. By pairing the twin-turbo V8 with electric motors that fill in the low-speed torque a single gear ratio can't provide, Koenigsegg eliminates an entire gearbox's worth of weight, friction, and failure points. It's an elegant solution on paper, and it's also why owning a Regera means depending on a small, specialized service network rather than the neighborhood transmission shop.Why the E85 Option Actually MattersThe Environmental Power Upgrade isn't just a badge. Per Mecum's specifications for this chassis, running the 5,065cc twin-turbo V8 on E85 pushes total system output from 1,500 hp to 1,757 hp at 7,800 rpm. That jump comes down to basic chemistry: ethanol carries a higher octane rating than gasoline, which resists knock and allows more boost and more aggressive ignition timing, while its higher latent heat of vaporization cools the intake charge on the way into the cylinder. Koenigsegg engineered the hardware to take advantage of both effects at the factory rather than leaving it to an aftermarket tuner, which is a meaningfully different proposition for insurance and warranty purposes than a garage-built flex-fuel conversion.The Rarity Math Behind the BiddingOptions-driven rarity isn't the same as color-driven rarity. A one-off paint code is a curiosity; a drivetrain-altering option fitted to only five cars out of an 80-unit production run is a different kind of scarcity, the kind that tends to hold up even when a broader market cools off. That distinction is worth remembering given how the collector car world has been behaving lately, and Backfire's own look at how Monterey Car Week 2026 reshuffled the map is a good primer on how much money is still moving through the hobby even when headline totals get complicated by no-sale lots and consignment fees. Hypercars like this Regera also increasingly land as one line in a broader collection rather than a standalone purchase, the same pattern visible in Cristiano Ronaldo's carbon-fiber garage full of similarly rarefied metal. A Nashville debut sale carries none of Monterey's pedigree, which makes this Regera as much a test of the venue as it is a test of the car.What Buying One Actually Commits You ToAn 800-volt battery pack, three electric motors, and a single-speed drive unit sound simple until you need someone qualified to service them, and Koenigsegg's authorized network isn't exactly on every corner. Ceramic brake rotors on a car like this run into five figures per set when they eventually need replacing, and a documented service history matters more here than on almost any other kind of collector car, the same lesson that applied to a multi-million-dollar Bugatti that sat forgotten for 25 years before anyone bothered to check what it actually was. On the performance side, Koenigsegg's own record of achievement backs up the engineering: the Regera has posted a 0-400-0 km/h acceleration-and-braking record twice, first in 2019 and again in 2023, proof that the gearbox-free approach isn't just a trick for the brochure.AdvertisementAdvertisementThese cars do get driven, not just trailered between auctions. Backfire caught one Regera getting pulled over while leading a convoy of hypercars toward Monterey just last month, proof that even a seven-figure hybrid hypercar occasionally has to deal with a state trooper instead of an auctioneer. Whether this particular example is worth stretching for comes down to what a room full of Nashville bidders decides a gearbox-free, E85-breathing, five-of-eighty Regera is worth on September 26. Koenigsegg didn't build many chances to find out.
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