Triplex Suspension System

When the rear hood of a Koenigsegg opens, you will notice a third damper, stretching from side to side across the top of the engine bay. The word written across its mid-section carbon fiber cover denotes its name – Triplex – and it’s yet another Koenigsegg innovation.

A Koenigsegg’s suspension geometry is designed for extremely fast cornering.  One of the challenges of this design is that allows the car to ‘squat’ under hard acceleration, e.g. at take-off from standstill.

While a certain amount of squat is desired - it can provide greater traction in some scenarios - too much squat can make the car hard to handle as the wheels struggle to maintain optimal traction and the front of the car experiences lift, with its negative effects on steering feel.

The Koenigsegg solution to this scenario is the Triplex damper - a third damper between the left and right sides of the suspension system.

Koenigsegg’s Triplex damper compresses as the car accelerates, providing dampened resistance against squat under hard acceleration.  The Triplex damper allows a certain amount of squat, but not so much that the rear wheels struggle to provide optimal traction and the front wheels lose steering feel.

A similar phenomenon takes place in high-aero cars when the car’s aerodynamic design (front splitter and canards, rear wing and diffuser) push the car down at high speed. If the car is pushed down too far, there are real fears that it could touch the road surface, which is extremely dangerous. The Triplex system takes some of this downforce load, pushing the car down in a more controlled manner. This is why the Koenigsegg Jesko Attack, with its extreme 1400kg of downforce, now has a Triplex damper at the front as well as at the rear. 

If the Triplex damper(s) were not in place, we’d have to change the geometry of our suspension to restrict squat, which is what most others do. The downside to that solution is that the altered geometry often counteracts efficient cornering. Triplex allows us to combat excessive squat, thereby maintaining mechanical grip and improving vehicle handling, while maintaining our extremely effective cornering geometry.

The Triplex damper also interacts with our unique Z-shaped anti roll bar.  The anti-roll bar, as the name suggests, uses its geometry to level out the car during high speed cornering, but can provide unwanted feedback on bumpy surfaces.  Undampened, this would lead to a lot of vibration for the driver and passenger as well as compromised handling. The Triplex damper works to soften this feedback, ensuring a smoother drive and better control without compromising our high speed cornering capabilities.