Why is a small Swedish automaker a decade ahead of the rest of the industry?
Enlarge / Making a success of the supercar game is not easy, but Christian von Koenigsegg's company has survived two decades and continues to develop innovative new technology that's years ahead of the competition. Ars talked to him to find out what he's most proud of. (credit: Franco Gutierrez)
BMW provided flights from DC to San Francisco and back, plus five nights in a hotel so we could attend Monterey Car Week. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.
It would be mixing ad campaigns if not metaphors to say that Swedes think differently about design, but I think there's something to it: Saab was famously left field, even down to where it located the ignition switch; Volvo carefully treads its own path with safety foremost in its mind but with crisp modern design. And then there's Koenigsegg.
Located at a former Swedish fighter base, this company has been ploughing its own furrow through the automotive superlatives: supercars, hypercars, now megacars. But always in its own way-how else to explain a three-cylinder engine with pneumatic actuators instead of camshafts, a V8 with no flywheel, or a transmission with seven clutches that's both nine-speed automatic but also six-speed manual, with clutch pedal no less?
At this year's Monterey Car Week, few are as close to automotive royalty as the company's eponymous founder, Christian von Koenigsegg. The company's stand at one end of The Quail was among the most mobbed throughout the day, as young TikTokkers in their best suits competed for his attention, or maybe just another look at his latest creation, the CC850. Part 50th birthday present to himself, part celebration of the company entering its third decade, it's a new take on Koenigsegg's first offering, the CC8S.