KOENIGSEGG
CRACKING UP WHO: TOM FORD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
I once got the Stig to ski tow me around a melting ice lake in an Agera R. The ski boots didn’t fit, the tow rope was too short and the Agera wasn’t slow. I then had to drift it around on the ice while the surface started to collapse, and I could see it breaking up. There’s a lot more to this story, but trying to fling a 1,100bhp turbo hypercar around when it had skinny winter tyres fitted will live with me forever. Also, I’m not dead, so the memory counts as a good one.
THE DEVIL’S IN THE DETAIL WHO: OLLIE MARRIAGE, MOTORING EDITOR
A visit to Koenigsegg’s home blows your mind. It’s just a few buildings on an airfield, but in them they don’t just build hypercars. I got the full tour from founder CvK. It wasn’t that one man was turning 750 individual pieces of carbon fibre into one biohazard wheel that got me, but that, in a small room off to the side, three blokes were designing an infotainment system from scratch. How much easier to just buy one? But that’s not the Koenigsegg way.
GOING FOR THE BURN WHO: ROWAN HORNCASTLE, TG.COM
I’ve seen my fair share of burnouts while working for TopGear. But I’ve never seen anything quite like what a Koenigsegg Regera did to to a fresh set of Michelin Pilot Cup 2 tyres. Ollie Marriage was behind the wheel when I asked him to gun it with TC off, thinking it’d make for an interesting photograph. What I did not account for was how quickly 1,479bhp and 1,465lb ft of torque would totally incinerate a super sticky 345-width rear Michelin. In a matter of seconds, a small part of Scandinavia was cloaked in a haze that made the Great Smog of 1952 look like a wedding DJ’s asthmatic smoke machine. Best thing about it? He was only using 20 per cent throttle.
LET’S GO FLY A... ER... CAR WHO: PETER GRUNERT, EX DEPUTY EDITOR
The disaster unwound as follows: test driver hurtled off up pleasant Swedish public road; epically expensive, carbon-fibre front rim connected with improbably sized bollard on apex of corner, and… shattered; Koenigsegg spun a full five times from a starting speed of circa 120mph, leaving 265 metres of skid marks behind it; large Volvo estate made extreme avoidance manoeuvre; Koenigsegg launched over ditch and landed, crumpled, in field; despite the roof not being in place, driver’s and passenger’s heads, miraculously, remained attached.
MACHINE IN THE GHOST [HALL] WHO: JACK RIX, DEPUTY EDITOR
The Geneva motor show cancelled, everything was being packed up, but Koenigsegg refused to leave until we’d flown in to see the new Gemera four-seater on its shiny new stand. ’Segg likes to do things differently.