Von his at factory, which housed fighter jets for the Swedish Air Force until 2003; the squadron’s logo, aghost, is visible on the back wall and is appliqued Koenigsegg on every car.

Photo credit tktktktkttk Von Koenigsegg his at factory, which housed fighter jets for the Swedish Air Force until 2003; the squadron’s logo, aghost, is visible on the back wall and is appliqued Koenigsegg on every car.

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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- 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, , 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 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 . don’t really know.” lion) are Italy’s Pagani Automobili SpA Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, director Von Koenigsegg’s bald pate and his and France’s 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 , the son of a serial entrepre- neur and a haute couture hatmaker whose clients included ’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, 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). “This already spent thousands of hours and mil- shop. “People often ask, ‘How customized makes the cars very easy to handle and lions of dollars on research and can I have my car?’ If you pay us enough, very safe in any driving condition,” he development. we’ll build you a helicopter,” von Koenig- says. “Anyone with common sense and Von Koenigsegg looks at things differ- segg says. “I think we are capable techni- a driver’s license can safely handle a Koe- ently. His company not only makes its cally of doing pretty much anything.” nigsegg.” All the systems, except for the own brakes, engines and transmissions When I ask if there’s anyone to whom ABS, can be turned off if the driver feels but also nearly everything else in the he won’t sell a car, von Koenigsegg re- he’s experienced enough to do so—which car, right down to the titanium bolts, ev- plies that until recently he’d always said von Koenigsegg does not often recom- ery one of which is stamped with the yes to anyone who could afford to buy mend. “If the controls are turned off and company logo, a stripped-down version one. That’s changed. “We now say no if full power is used, you need to be very of the 900-year-old von Koenigsegg we think they’re not the right buyer,” skilled,” he says. family crest. The result, Car and Driver he says, vaguely pointing out that cer- “In day-to-day traffic, it is surprisingly editor-in-chief Eddie Alterman says, is a tain people are simply too much trou- docile and easy to drive,” says Jeffrey truly artisanal supercar. “He’s rethought ble. “It doesn’t happen often, but that’s Cheng, Newport Beach, California–based

98 president of JDJ Investments and the a project that will further redefine the owner of a silver Koenigsegg CCX, a model concept of a hypercar—a money-is-no- created exclusively to meet the standards object venture begun at the behest of his of the U.S. market. Of course, that’s not Chinese dealer, who desired something why he has one. “It’s just brute horse- “extreme” to sell to his more-demanding power when you step on the pedal—like customers. “We are spending thousands a locomotive,” he says. of hours of engineering and tooling and Cheng’s car is one of 12 known Koenig- testing for a very limited number of cars,” seggs in the U.S. He bought it in early 2013 von Koenigsegg tells me. from Ben Abrams, a Seattle entrepreneur The One:1 is named after its ambition who felt he wasn’t making the most of it. to be the first assembly-line vehicle to “Driving a supercar like the CCX on public truly achieve a one-to-one ratio of weight roads with speed limits could be compared and horsepower. If successfully pro- to dating a supermodel but only being al- duced, it will weigh 1,400 kilograms lowed to hold hands,” Abrams wrote on (3,100 pounds) and put out 1,400 horse- the website eGarage upon selling the car. power, a quantum leap over the 965 Another American owner, a telecommuni- horsepower of the base-model Agera. cations entrepreneur from Chicago who “Other cars have achieved this but by prefers to remain anonymous, owns two measuring dry weight—no oil, no water, Koenigseggs. He actually drives them to no fuel,” von Koenigsegg says. His num- the grocery store, although he’s also used ber will take into account all the neces- one to achieve 215 mph on an airport run- sary fluids and even the driver. way, likening the experience to piloting a Computer simulations project that the jet plane. One:1 will be the fastest Koenigsegg yet, So coveted are Koenigseggs that even capable of 450 kph or more. If the comput- their namesake doesn’t own one. To take a ers are correct, it will also be the fastest car car off the line would be to take a car away in the world from zero to 200, from zero to from a customer, so von Koenigsegg in- 300 and from zero to 400. Engineers ex- stead drives a Saab 9-5 with a cracked pect the last number to be around 20 sec- windshield. He bought the white four- onds. To put that in perspective, it takes door—the last all-new model Saab built—in Hot Wheels the 45 seconds to achieve 2009, when he briefly led a coalition (in- Koenigsegg Automotive’s 400 kph. Von Koenigsegg expects to have cluding a Chinese auto group and San Di- greatest hits a prototype by the end of the year. ego–based investor Mark Bishop) in a bold Prospective buyers should note that the attempt to save the iconic Swedish brand. strictly limited production of six has been CCR (2004) The deal went so far as to be announced in An 806-horsepower engine helped this presold and that there’s already plenty of the press before von Koenigsegg and his car to set the Guinness World Record for pent-up demand should any of those lucky fastest assembly-line vehicle. partners pulled out, after negotiations few fall through. The price isn’t yet public, dragged on for more than six months and but von Koenigsegg says it’s “substantially CCX (2006) promises from various banks and govern- First model to meet U.S. safety regulations. higher” than that of the Agera S. Even so, ments went unmet. “Looking back, it was Note the company’s unique door, which he admits, the company will almost cer- the right thing to do,” he says. “Many peo- reinvented the gull-wing style. tainly lose money on the project—which ple say to me now, ‘You were lucky that he says doesn’t concern him. Building a never happened.’ They might be right.” CCXR (2007) hypercar that sets new land-speed and ac- This 1,018-hp model runs on biofuel. It was Still, it’s an intriguing thought: What billed as the world’s first environmentally celeration records will only burnish Koe- could Christian von Koenigsegg have correct supercar. nigsegg’s credentials, and future done with Saab? And would the ultimate Koenig­segg cars will likely benefit from tiv e artisanal automaker really have been Agera (2010) the trickle-down R&D originating with omo happy mass-producing automobiles? Swedish for take action, the Agera the One:1. has seven speeds and a twin-turbo “My dream has always been to build cars,” V-8 that puts out 910 hp. Von Koenigsegg toggles through a se- aut gg von Koenigsegg says. “I love hypercars, ries of renderings, admiring his immi- e oe nigs but I’m just as intrigued by the idea of im- Agera R (2011) nent creation from various angles. “No proving a normal car.” Koenigsegg’s most recent model runs one needs a car like this,” he says, twist- y o f k on biofuel and boasts a top speed of s Back in his office, Koenigsegg flips his 440 kph. Cost: $1.6 million. ing his mouth into a smile. “They just e o urt computer monitor around to show me need to want one.” c

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