Issue 37 | One of a Kind – Koenigsegg Regera

‍When did you first hear about the Regera?

The timeline is a bit odd because we ordered a Regera before we even thought about buying an Agera. The Agera came about in one afternoon when someone said there was a car in Japan and asked if we wanted it. With the Regera, me and my dad went to Geneva and we wanted to buy something more on the modern side as a spectacle of the car collection. I told my dad I had been around Koenigsegg and met a few Koenigsegg owners, so we should have a look at Koenigsegg.

So, we had a look at Koenigsegg, and we also had a look at Bugatti and Pagani, but the fact that, as soon as you walk onto the Koenigsegg stand, you’ve got Christian saying nice to meet you, here’s a drink, you’re chatting with everyone and instantly, before you’ve even thought about buying a car, you feel so welcome, and that was such an overwhelming thing. It was like wow, this is a company that really is fixated on making relationships so important.

I think we ordered about seven cars that day, the Regera and some smaller level cars, and in the morning, we woke up and went, god we’ve got to cancel some orders! The one car we didn’t cancel was the Koenigsegg because, for some reason, on a drunk evening it sounded like a sensible idea, and here it is.

What attracted you to Koenigsegg over other brands?

It was more the fact of the family aspect of it. We’ve been around Bugattis, friends have had Bugattis, friends have had Paganis, but it was very much like buying from a company. The brief experience we had before we bought the Regera was most definitely that this is a family and you’re investing into a relationship as well as a car.

With these sort of cars, you want to have a relationship with the owner, but also the people who make them. To be able to call the factory whenever and have a nice conversation, and even call Christian, I don’t know any other company like that. You can’t exactly call Bugatti and speak to the owner of the company and have a good relationship with them, so that was a big factor in choosing Koenigsegg.

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How long did you own the Agera R for?

We owned the Agera for about two years. We bought it in December 2017 because we had the Regera coming and we wanted to be a part of the Koenigsegg family, so it was more to be invested into the social side of it.

Vmax was quite an interesting one with the Agera because I had never done top speed events, none of our family had and we didn’t have anything truly fast before the Agera. Supervettura approached us and asked if we wanted to go along, and we were a little cautious, but we went along to it and it slowly turned into a competition between Koenigsegg owners of who could get the fastest top speed. The One:1 held the record and, at that point, I was 18 years old and I didn’t think I’d be even driving it, let alone trying to set a record. I had Adam from SCD in the car with me at 230mph and that was pretty outrageous, that was something I’ll never forget.

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What is the Koenigsegg buying experience like?

I would say surreal. It’s a long process; it doesn’t take a day to build these things, and they’re very open about that. There are going to be 80 cars, so it’s not like if you go over to Ferrari and they’re building a thousand of them, and there are even 500 Chirons. So, they tell you the wait is two years and there’s a good chance it’s going to be more because of R&D and multiple things, and that’s before you even spec the car. So, depending on your options, it could take two years or it could take seven years, because everything is bespoke.

Our car took around three years, partially because of the level we went to on the spec. We went over to Sweden a couple of times to try and refine every nut and bolt, literally. We had colour samples of bolts to try and get them the right gold, the wheels took a month or two to make perfect in terms of getting the right sample and the blue took forever. To get it all as one took a long time, but it was 100% worth it.

When did you first drive the Regera?

It was the last time we went to finalise the spec of the car. The car was built and they wanted us to go over, tick it all off and make sure everything was fine. You’re met at the factory by Halldora and Christian, and when Halldora von Koenigsegg comes up to you and says, “I cannot wait for you to see your car”, that’s a moment I was like wow, this is going to be something, it sort of clicked that this is the car we’ve waited a long time for.

We went downstairs into the workshop and there it was, and I think it took me about an hour to get over it. I’ve never been speechless before but seeing that for the first time, I was genuinely blown away. I had no intention of driving the car, then Christian turned around to me and said, “Do you want to drive it?”, and of course I’m not going to turn that down! He hopped in the car with me and we went on a 45 minute trip driving the Regera for the first time.

I idolised Christian before we had anything to do with Koenigsegg, so to be sitting in your Regera with Christian von Koenigsegg, telling jokes and having a laugh, it was a moment I’ll never ever forget, it was so surreal.

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Tell us about the car and the spec.

The car is a custom bespoke blue carbon with diamond in the lacquer accented by 24-carat gold lines which are hand applied and it has the bespoke blue Alcantara interior. It’s the first Regera to have the drift stitch pattern on the seats, gold stitching, gold bolts, and everything that was chrome or dark chrome is gold bar the centre console which is now grey. It’s the first Koenigsegg to have gold wheels.

The car is producing around 1,800bhp. The hybrid battery gives about 700bhp and the internal combustion engine is 1,100, and once it’s trickled down all the way to the wheels, it’s running 1,500bhp. 0-60 is I think 2.8 and top speed is over 250mph and it’s the fastest car to do zero to 250mph and back to zero in around 31.5 seconds. The thing to wrap your head around is that’s back to zero, so 0-250mph is something like 21 seconds, and we will be doing it at Vmax.

One of the nicest things about Koenigseggs that they’ve always featured is that you can take the roof off. They say it takes one person but realistically, to be safe when you’re wielding a massive piece of carbon fibre with gold in it, you’re going to have two people doing it, but you can take it off easily, put it in the front and you’ve instantly got a targa which is really nice. The one problem is there’s no storage in the car, so if you take the roof off and put it in the front you instantly lose all storage. We always joke saying that if you see a Koenigsegg, generally you’ll see a Rolls Royce behind it following with the luggage, because you can’t put anything in it bar a tiny little travel bag.

What is it like to drive?

It’s great, but to have people around you is a pain. What happens is, people who don’t know what it is want to know what it is and people who do know what it is are even worse. So, you’re driving along on the motorway and you have vans cutting you up, driving really aggressively just to get photos, and obviously you don’t want to just say go away because they’re passionate about the cars.

One thing that’s nice about it though is the visibility. It takes a lot of getting used to because it’s like a fighter jet, but once you get used to it, it’s an experience and personally I love it. One thing that’s strange if you hop out of that and into something like a Pista, the cabin feels huge in the Pista even though the actual volume of space is bigger in the Koenigsegg, so you feel confined but you have a lot of space.

In terms of noise at 70mph, it’s minimal as you’re probably only doing 2,000rpm so that’s quite strange, but it’s lovely because if you go on a long journey, it’s really pleasant when you cruise along, but when you put your foot down, the revs peak.

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When did you first go full throttle?

The first time we properly went for it in the car, it was quite strange because it wasn’t what I was expecting. It was much more than I was expecting. I was expecting something like the Agera which is instantly aggressive, pause for gearshift, then aggressive again, so it gives you that split-second break. Because this is so much faster and there is no gear change, you’re almost begging for a gear change because you’re being pushed so hard into your seat, and the faster you go, it’s not like it peters off, it keeps accelerating harder and harder and harder. It’s the only car I’ve been in where you get thrown into your seat and then pushed harder. The gearshift in a normal car gives you some relief, but in this it is relentless.

What are your future plans with the car?

In terms of trips and top speed runs, we want to do stuff with SCD, because we’ve never been able to do a proper tour with you guys, so we 100% want to do that and go from there really. We’re very relaxed. Generally, if someone says they’ve got an event on next Sunday, we’ll go, as long as it’s not in Sweden or Switzerland or somewhere really far, we’re pretty open. That’s why people who organise events get annoyed with us because they ask if we can come to this event in six months’ time and I say ask me the day before and there’s a good chance I’ll come!

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Is it a keeper?

It is definitely a keeper for the time being. We bought this car to keep and enjoy. Luckily it isn’t mileage-dependent; I think we did 8,000 miles in two years in the Agera, so this one we’re probably going to do more.

There’s always going to be something prettier and faster, so you find something you love and you stick with it, and I can’t see anything being more enjoyable than the Regera.

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What has your SCD experience been like?

We’ve been members now for two or three years now. I’ve always been sceptical of car clubs; we’ve hosted hundreds of car clubs at the museum, all for charity, and they’re all the same, but when I was approached by Adam, it was very interesting because it was once again, referring back to the Koenigsegg thing, more of a family- based thing.

I was calling Adam at 11 o’clock some nights chatting about events and things like that, and so we were debating joining and we thought, we’ve got the collection, they host amazing events, and when they’re not hosting them, they’re turning up to all the events we were at!

It means we can go to events with a whole new group of friends and people who are like-minded and it means that we get access to stuff that we wouldn’t normally; even with a Koenigsegg you don’t get access to certain things, and SCD have always been spot on every time — there’s genuinely no other club like it.