Koenigsegg's One And Only Racing Car Just Sold For £3.3 Million

Koenigsegg’s technical achievements are many. From the Gemera with its 600bhp inline-three and 30kg, 330bhp ‘Quark’ motors to the astonishingly fast Regera and its single-speed gearbox, the Swedish firm has been up to all sorts of technical trickery over the years. But it’s never put all of that know-how into motorsport competition.

It did, however, come close. In the mid-2000s, Christian von Koenigsegg’s supercar company was eying up the FIA GT1 regulations, which seemed ideal for the CC family of vehicles. A version of that car compliant with the rules would be eligible for a 24 Hours of Le Mans entry, as well as multiple other series.

Developed between 2003 and 2007, the car Koenigsegg engineer Dag Bölenius and his team came up with was called the CCGT. GT1 regs called for a car much less powerful than the supercharged CCR, so the CCGT instead uses a naturally aspirated V8 displacing five litres and producing around 600bhp. It’s lighter, though, at under 1,000kg, and produced a whole heap more downforce - 600kg - thanks in part to a big, fixed rear wing.

Rather than the six-speed manual of the road car, the CCGT’s rear wheels are propelled via a Cima sequential gearbox built in a magnesium transaxle. On the chassis front, there are pushrod actuated dampers, and carbon disc brakes squeezed by six-piston callipers all around. Clothing all this is a body shell made from carbon fibre and kevlar.

Shakedown runs began in 2008 at Sweden’s Knutstorp, but just two months later, the programme hit an insurmountable hurdle. The FIA were no longer allowing cars built with carbon fibre monocoques, and as if that wasn’t enough, the road-car homologation production number shot up from 20 to 350. The CCGT was obsolete.

This was a huge shame, but we have been left with a curious piece of supercar history in the form of the prototype seen here. It was snapped up by Koenigsegg shareholder Bård Eker when the GT1 project was binned and remained under his ownership until this year.

It went under the hammer via Bonhams at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on 14 July and sold for a cool £3,319,000. Pricey, for a car that never ran, but perhaps something of a bargain for an absolute one-off and a window into what might have been.

Additional reporting from Phill Tromans