Von Koenigsegg at His Factory, Which Housed Fighter Jets for the Swedish Air Force Until 2003
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Von Koenigsegg at his factory, which housed fighter jets for the Swedish Air Force until 2003; the squadron’s logo, a ghost, is visible on the back wall and is appliqued on every Koenigsegg car. every on Koenigsegg appliqued is and wall back the on visible is a ghost, logo, squadron’s the 2003; until Force Air Swedish the for jets fighter housed which factory, at his Koenigsegg Von PHOTO CREDIT TKTKTKTKTTK PHOTO Swede Sensation BY JOsh DEAN How Christian von Koenigsegg took on the ultracompetitive world of supercars— and won PHOTOGRAPhs BY VINCENT FOURNIER PHOTO CREDIT TKTKTKTKTTK PHOTO Von Koenigsegg at his factory, which housed fighter jets for the Swedish Air Force until 2003; the squadron’s logo, a ghost, is visible on the back wall and is appliqued on every Koenigsegg car. 93 A PHOTO IN CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGg’S remote, decommissioned military base, to 35 vehicles. Koenigsegg controls about office shows one of the 41-year-old bring to mind a Bond villain. And the as- 25 percent of the market but has the in- Swede’s limited-edition supercars—a sociation is apt, for while von Koenig- fluence of a far larger brand, at least 2011 Agera R, in fire-engine red—along- segg’s ambitions may not be malevolent, among exotic-car aficionados. At April’s side a sparkly gold abomination that he’s nevertheless bent on world domina- Geneva auto show, the Hundra was looks like it drove off the set of Chitty tion, at least in the realm of seven-figure named “Most Popular Hypercar,” beating Chitty Bang Bang. The latter is a re- supercars. out highly anticipated masterpieces by creation of the car von Koenigsegg first The automobile industry is littered Automobili Lamborghini SpA, Bugatti, saw at age 5 in a stop-motion Norwegian with the skeletons of failed startups Ferrari SpA, McLaren Automotive Ltd. film called Flaklypa Grand Prix, which driven by a single man’s all-consuming vi- and Porsche SE. tells the story of a small-town bicycle re- sion. Think Tucker, DeLorean, Fisker— Koenigsegg Automotive is known espe- pairman who builds a race car from scrap and those are just the famous ones. cially for performance. The company parts and—in the face of doubt and ridi- (A major recent exception, of course, is holds the world record for acceleration cule from established automakers—goes Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors Inc.) Conven- (zero to 300 kilometers [186 miles] per on to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans. tional wisdom holds that it’s essentially hour in 14.53 seconds), for braking (300 to Von Koenigsegg watched the film doz- impossible to create a car company from zero kph in 6.66 seconds) and—the one ens of times and, with each viewing, be- scratch and actually make it work. The that makes its founder proudest—for both came more certain of its message: Anyone costs are too high; the barriers to entry, acceleration and braking: zero to 300 kph can make a great car. “I just thought, ‘If too great. But that’s what von Koenigsegg and back to zero again in 21.19 seconds, a a bike repairman can do it, so can I,’” von has done. number that suggests outstanding overall Koenigsegg says in his office at Koenig- Koenigsegg Automotive’s cars—which performance rather than just raw power. segg Automotive AB, located on a former start at $1.4 million—are today some of Darren Jablow, a supercar connoisseur Swedish Air Force base on the country’s the most exclusive and sought-after as- and founder of online car-buying site verdant south coast. sembly-line vehicles on earth. In the best Speedlist, describes Koenigsegg cars as the Von Koenigsegg’s stocky frame is clad of years, the company builds only 12 or 14, “manic, peel-your-face-back, fighter-jet in slim-fit designer jeans and a tailored each one tailored to a specific buyer. Ear- hot rods of the hypercar world.” blue oxford with a small CvK mono- lier this year, the company built the 100th The field of hypercars swells this year grammed on the breast pocket—though car in its 19-year history. Nicknamed the with the unveiling of seven-figure sculp- these aren’t the first things you’d notice Hundra (Swedish for Hundred), the tures on wheels by Ferrari (LaFerrari), about the man. He suffers from alopecia 1,030-horsepower, carbon-fiber Agera S McLaren (the P1) and Porsche (the 918 areata, an autoimmune disease that was constructed from more than 4,000 Spyder). Von Koenigsegg isn’t concerned. causes the body to reject hair and can re- custom parts and finished with stripes of “Out of 7 billion human beings, 100 a year sult in partial or total follicle loss. The 24-karat gold leaf, applied by an artisan are buying hypercars,” he says. “We’re al- precise cause is undetermined, but stress flown in from Italy. It’s bound for a cus- ready a big player in a tiny segment.” is a known trigger. In early company pho- tomer in Hong Kong. “Asia is definitely And although von Koenigsegg plans to tos, von Koenigsegg has a full head of dark our biggest market,” von Koenigsegg says. ramp up production for 2014 and beyond, hair; however, for many years, he’s been Koenigsegg Automotive’s only effective it won’t be by much. “We could live very not only bald but also lacking eyebrows competitors in the so-called hypercar well on 18 to 20 cars,” he says—a number and any other visible body hair. “Maybe space (loosely defined as limited-edition, so minuscule the company barely regis- it’ll come back,” he says with a shrug. “I handbuilt cars costing in excess of $1 mil- ters within the wider automotive industry. don’t really know.” lion) are Italy’s Pagani Automobili SpA Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, director Von Koenigsegg’s bald pate and his and France’s Bugatti Automobiles SAS; of the Center of Automotive Research mellifluous, lightly accented English, the latter currently dominates the cate- at Germany’s University of Applied Sci- not to mention his headquarters on a gory with a whopping annual output of 30 ences, estimates that about 67 million cars 94 are sold annually worldwide and that even an exclusive automaker such as Rolls- Royce Motor Cars Ltd. is selling some 4,000. “A company like Koenigsegg,” Dudenhoeffer says, “is more a hobby than a business.” Von Koenigsegg grew up in the suburbs of Stockholm, the son of a serial entrepre- neur and a haute couture hatmaker whose clients included Sweden’s royal family. A born tinkerer, von Koenigsegg took apart toasters and tape players before moving on to go-carts, mopeds and motor- bikes. Even as a child, he says, he wouldn’t just look at a side mirror and think, “Cool!” Instead, he would wonder precisely why it was constructed as it was. “I never say I’m a car designer,” says von Koenigsegg, who didn’t bother with college and has no formal training in design or en- gineering, on a tour of his surprisingly quiet factory. The two-story space housed Saab fighter jets for the Swedish Air Force until 2003; the squadron’s logo, a ghost, has been appliqued on the back window of every Koenigsegg built since the company moved in. “I like to say the car designs itself but that I’m the guide,” he says. Most anything that ends up in a Koenig- segg vehicle begins in the founder’s brain, often expressed as a squiggle on a napkin. The shape of Koenigsegg cars today is still basically the same as the one that von Koe- nigsegg first imagined in August 1994: a midengine car with short front and rear overhangs, large side air intakes, a round windshield and a detachable hardtop. It took von Koenigsegg two years to make a running prototype of that car, which One supercar would become the CC (for competition connoisseur coupe). “Let’s say the vision has stayed in- describes Koenigsegg tact,” he says, opening the door of a royal blue Agera R with black accents. cars as the ‘manic, Von Koenigsegg has just returned from peel-your-face-back, Singapore—he’s fighting fatigue, as well fighter-jet hot rods as a cold—where he personally delivered of the hypercar an Agera S to that country’s first-ever owner of a Koenigsegg. (Because of Singa- world.’ pore’s insanely high automobile taxes, it cost the buyer $4.5 million.) “They say it is the fastest, most powerful car ever sold in Singapore,” von Koenigsegg says, not- ing that the speed limit in the tiny city- state is 90 kph—300 kph slower than the The Agera R, which holds world records for acceleration and braking top recorded speed of an Agera S. 96 Von Koenigsegg makes his own brakes, engines and just about everything else in the car, right down to the titanium bolts stamped with his family crest. The model for most automakers, espe- just about everything,” Alterman says. quite a nice thing to be able to do.” cially small ones, is to take existing parts— In total, some 4,000 hours of hand- One thing that isn’t a barrier to entry, brakes, engines, transmissions—and craftsmanship goes into each vehicle. he says, is skill. Every Koenigsegg car combine them in a car of proprietary de- Though Koenigsegg offers standard mod- comes with a full suite of what von Koe- sign. It’s far cheaper and typically more els—the Agera S and the Agera R (which nigsegg calls “safety nets,” including trac- pragmatic from an engineering perspec- runs on biofuel) are his current offerings— tion control, stability control and an tive to buy parts from companies that have the company considers itself a bespoke antilock braking system (ABS).