Christian Von Koenigsegg - Establishing the Brand and Subaru Flat-12 Beer Brewer Supercar (Part 2/4)

In Part 1 of the #blogpost [Update: I’ve added some information in the first part of the blog that I had missed linking some events here], I discussed about Christian’s origins and his early days before stepping into the world of automotive. In this part of the blog post, you’ll be reading about Mr. Koenigsegg’s journey into establishing his brand and making his first supercar.

Establishing The Brand

In 1993, Koenigsegg went off in search of a designer for his first car. Now, at this stage, Christian had still never designed a car professionally, (just sketches on his computer and some of his childhood drawings) but he had a philosophy that it must be a natural shape and very efficient in performance. For this reason, he approached Mr. David Crafoord who was the design director at the Swedish design consultancy ErgonomiDesign. He’s passionate – in a cool, Scandinavian way – about medical innovation. His work has him brainstorming on what he terms as “innovations” for companies like 3M and Johnson & Johnson. The two met in Mr. Crafoord’s office and Christian explained him about setting up his own car company with his father and on a tight budget.

After much work and research, Mr. Crafoord was able to create an enticing business plan to acquire the financing. This had to be made feasible for Christian and his father as they were on very restricted resources and a very tight budget. Above all this there was a catch: Mr. Crafoord had never designed a car. So, he decided to get feedback from Christian on the design language for his car. They started looking into the history as what cars were successful in terms of design - Ford GT40, Citroën DS, LeMans race cars from the 1980s and, of course, Ferrari. But Christian wanted his car to be as far different from Ferrari… a brand that had it’s own niche.

The key points he pointed were that the car must be well built as at the time in the 90’s, Ferraris were built asymmetrically with poor reliability and quality and were expensive to maintain. Koenigsegg wanted to offer all of that without negating the beauty element. However, up and until this point Koenigsegg had no idea about the competition he was up against and with such a small budget there was no way a Swedish start up car company would get their hands on the competition. They visited a Ferrari dealer in Stockholm and asked the people there if they can look at the ‘Honda NSX’… clearly they weren’t pleased nor friendly with them as Mr. Crafoord recalled in one of his interviews. The project began with Christian showing him his original design he drew on his Commodore 64 and later on the Agima 1000 computer. Mr. Crafoord then penned down his ideas and designed a 1:5 ratio model of the car based on Christians ideas. He took inspiration from nature for aerodynamics and ultimately reach to one of the most humble animals in the world for the design - a dolphin.

It seemed natural to study animals that have managed to perfect their aero and hydrodynamic form through millions of years of evolution. - Mr. David Crafoord

The original design according to Christian was that the car was supposed to be both a Targa and a convertible all in one and offered as a single product rather making two different version. However, due to the complexities encountered, this idea was dropped with Christian and Crafoord settling on the Targa style as the only option to go with. Koenigsegg then insisted on a removable top that could be stored – a unique concept in its time which added the pressures of storage space to the equation. The cockpit too was inspired by the Le Mans Porsche but where the LM Porsche was designed as a single seater cockpit, the Koenigsegg had to be a dual seater. Naturally, a larger cockpit had to be made. The corners of the car would become rounder as he sketches. The lines start to flow and they can visualize how air would flow across the fenders, slip past the windscreen, and channel into the flush rear spoiler. The targa roof split shape is what Crafoord describes it as “Dolphins breaking the water wave”. The important thing to note was that the car had to be designed to a timeless piece of art. Something that would be void of the design elements that would age the design quickly. Elements such as fins, flares or other gimmicks that would date the design quickly were all avoided.

The car was basically two symmetrical squares with an ovoid sphere in the centre. A very simple and elegant design but a lot of thought was put into it. Especially the double bubble rear roof lining which was created to ensure a low pressure region and downforce would be generated. However this turned out to be very tricky as there was no way to make a glass with such extreme curves at the time. So Crafoord decides to put in a small sectional window with the rear panel of the roof being glass as well also creasing between the two roof bubbles eliminating the clustered feeling and giving some rear visibility.

In 1994, Christian Von Koenigsegg goes off in search of a powerplant for his car. He had a look at several different car companies in his research before he finds the right power unit for his car - an Audi 4.2L V8. He went with Audi as it seems like a good deal at the time as Christian thought it would be a good base to add more power in the future for the production version. He met with the executives of Audi at the dealer in Stockholm to strike a deal. After explaining his business plan set by David Crafoord to the executives, they were pleased to hear it and decided to supply one of their engines to Koenigsegg for a test fit in the chassis.

With the engine now in hands of Christian, he decided it was the right time to establish the brand name of his company. He approached his old time childhood friend, Jacob Låftman who was Christian’s childhood friend and a very talented graphic designer. They both lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same school together. He would ask Jacob to design the company’s emblem. The emblem Jacob would design was based on the Koenigsegg coat of arms which was given to one of his ancestors, when he was honored as the Knight of the German/Roman army and has been a family crest since the 12th century.

When the logotype of Koenigsegg was created, it was quite clearly a derivation of the original family coat of arms. At the top end you recognize a crowning ornament - a golden monogram on blue - representing the letters KCC for Koenigsegg CC. The shield with its divided fields of red and yellow diamonds - within a blue frame - is based upon the original ancient Coat of Arms of the medieval Koenigsegg family from Schwaben, Germany. The original is a single field of golden diamonds surrounded by ornaments. Unfortunately, Jacob Låftman would pass away in 2002 leaving Koenigsegg to carry on with the now designed family crest. And so on 12th August, 1994, Koenigsegg Automotive AB is established.

“The plan I had to build cars was pretty much the opposite of what people usually think is a smart business idea. Nobody was asking for it. It was seemingly impossible. It was expensive. Nobody had ever come from nothing and done it successfully before. So it was a stupid business idea, basically. An impossible plan. And that’s why I liked it. I wanted to prove to myself and everyone else that anything is possible if you put your mind, heart and soul into it. I really believed that and still do.” – Christian Von Koenigsegg

Now that the design was finalised and the engine in hand, Christian needed someone to fabricate a full size body shell and the actual prototype. He looked up advertisement agency and after quite some search, he found just the person for the job - Svenharry Åkesson, a fabricator in the heart of Stockholm who according to Christian had all the necessary qualifications to help him build his dream car.

Svenharry Åkesson had been building Formula 3 cars since the 1960s for his clients and had gained a reputation for building smaller series of open seat racecars. From there he moved on to making a successful fire suppression system in use of automobiles which he sells that idea to focus on cars again. He designed a Mercedes C111 like sports car on the chassis of a Volkswagen Beetle called the Silver Hawk for his son and showcased it on a kitcar show where it gain a lot of popularity and a demand for purchase of it is generated. Around 225 of the Silver Hawks are sold before Svenharry sells the company to a Finnish company. With the money he now has, he establishes a new company called Sethera. Originally meant to use the Volkswagen architecture but later moves on to use Ford parts. He created the Falcon Mk1 which does well in Netherlands.

Åkesson gets a phone call from the advertising agency about a Beer company called Falcon looking for a unique design to be built as a ‘show-stopper’ and the design had to be spectacular to be an attention grabber. Svenharry decided to take this project up as a challenge. The agency and sponsors would fund all the materials, but Svenharry’s skills and time would be provided free on the basis that the car would become his after one year. However, after much work and injection of Svenharry’s own money, no funds had been received from the sponsors and the project stagnated as the Falcon brand was loosing money after the ban on Class IIB beers in 1977 and had been struggling since 1985 before it was sold to Carlsberg in 1996.

Early in 1995, Svenharry was contacted by Christian Von Koenigsegg who had found his designs on the Internet and this resulted in a request that he design a special car for Christian. He came to his office and workshop where he saw the Sethera Falcon (after the Falcon brewery) and having contacted Christian’s father, it was quickly decided that they would fund the development and completion of that car which was to become the prototype Koenigsegg CC.

Christian realised the money was not enough to build an actual prototype. So he turned to a business partner Mikael for some more funds. Mikael agreed to fund Koenigsegg’s prototype but the funds weren’t enough to complete the project. At the time in 1995, there was a lot of IT boom in Sweden which bought in a lot of money to the nation. Christian decided that it would be a wiser option to approach the Swedish Board for National Technical Development and ask for a loan. There, Christian and Mikael met a lady, who at the time was in her 50s which to Christian didn’t really seem the automotive enthusiastic type. Nonetheless, they proceeded and asked her whether the board could help finance this crazy idea for a Swedish supercar company and to their surprise, she liked the car and asked, “How much do you need?”

A sum of 1.5 million crowns ($150,000 back in 1995) was granted for the development of the first prototype. However, they were given a condition to build the prototype - move to an area with high unemployment but regardless of where they’d move, they’d still be granted a space of 1500 sqm on rent. So they could go north, way north, above the arctic circle, or they could go to south-east Sweden, to a place called Olofström on the coast. It also meant Volvo had a presence there in that region as well which could be potentially useful to them for resources and labour so that’s where Koenigsegg decided to move.

Over in Olofström, Koenigsegg employed some skilled locals to help built their first prototype. They had the Sethera Falcon tubular steel chassis to be used for the project along with the Audi 4.2L V8 in the chassis. The building which was granted to them was already occupied for the next 18 months by Volvo. Christian crew decided it wasn’t too bothersome that space was occupied, so Koenigsegg and his team rented out a small 400 sqm garage where they’d continue to develop the CC prototype.

Throughout 1995, Koenigsegg worked on the CC prototype. However, the landlord on which they’d leased the space to build their car wanted to expand the space and give it to Volvo. It made sense to them to give in rather than hold on to the space they had as the landlord had assumed they won’t get anywhere much. And so, Koenigsegg decides to move to Ängelholm which would become the new home of Koenigsegg.

I spent a lot of time in Ängelholm when I was young as my parents had a summer house nearby, in Förslöv. So when we had the chance to move from Olofström, Ängelholm had some appeal as it was a known area and not as far north as my hometown, Stockholm. Compared to Stockholm there are less people, there is less snow, quieter roads and it’s closer to the European market, etc. It was ideal for this kind of operation.

One of my favourite places in Ängelholm when I was young was a local car dealership. They sold sports cars. I used to ride my moped there and press my face up against the glass, looking at all the cars inside.

When it was time for us to move, I found out that the car dealership I used to visit as a child might be available. We were able to rent half of the space at first, then the full space, and finally we bought the property and prepared ourselves to manufacture cars there. It was amazing – I was doing my dream job in a place I’d absolutely loved throughout my childhood. - Christian Von Koenigsegg

In 1996, Koenigsegg had managed to get the CC fired up and running albeit with the fibreglass shell and while it wasn’t anywhere near sophisticated, it was good enough for Christian that the Audi engine ran well. But the most important bit for Christian was that the hardtop roof was removable and it fit well according to his designs. This gave the car a luxury no other car had at the time. All this was done in a span of 18 months and with people who agreed to help Christian at little or free cost. The biggest step forward came in hiring engineer and programmer Dag Bölenius, who wrote a bespoke chassis-handling simulation program.

"We managed to find geometry chassis data on cars such as the Ferrari F40, McLaren F1 and Ford GT40. We punched in mass, centre of gravity, tyre spec and weight distribution to help us understand the philosophies used – then we came up with our own.” - Dag Bölenius

However, at this stage Svenharry’s work was over and decided to leave the team and venture on his own path. Christian and his father had paid him for his modest work that he was able to get the prototype running and complete the bodywork and in this process bought the Sethera Falcon chassis from Svenharry. Even Mikael decided to venture off as automotive wasn’t his thing. Based on the calculation and data given by Dag, Koenigsegg developed a new chassis with better reinforced materials, suspension, brakes, cooling, aerodynamics and slightly more refined body all based on the Sethera Falcon platform. So ultimately, a car meant to be a promotional entity for a beer company ended up serving Christian Von Koenigsegg in building his dream car.

By the summer of 1996, the Koenigsegg CC prototype was finished and ready for a shakedown. The engine was tuned up as well. New fuel injectors, air intake, exhaust and a dry sump lubrication were added improving the engine performance. All this meant the Audi 4.2L V8 was producing between 550 to 600 bhp mark and could theoretically go past 320 km/h thanks to the low weight of just 700 kgs. The car was also presented to the media for the first time and the Swedish media responded with positive feedback as a potential contender to the German or Italian sports car makers.

Over the course of the following year, Koenigsegg CC prototype underwent several public road testing and vigorous race track sessions. World-renowned racecar drivers, videlicet; Picko Troberg, Calle Rosenblad and Rickard Rydell tested the prototype. All were astonished by its outstanding performance. The concept had been proved to work. However, for a car that was built on a tight budget, Koenigsegg couldn’t offer anything in terms of driving aids such as ABS, traction control or stability management. As a result, the car had a very raw handling characteristics.

After the track and public road shakedown sessions, Koenigsegg visited the Volvo wind tunnel for further studying the design and improving on it. The design clearly needed improvements as it was a bit tacky and unrefined around the edges. The underbelly, nose, spoiler, the rake angle of windscreen, headlights and the detachable roof aerodynamics were noted. Especially the targa roof which clearly needed refinement as the roof was detachable and storable in the front, it had to be refined so as to reduce the wind noise inside the cabin.

After the wind tunel testing, Koenigsegg gathered data and set to work on the second prototype of the CC. However this one would still be a 1:1 shell as it would be used to study the lessons learnt at the racetrack and wind testing. The second prototype served as a base to improve the overall design of the CC and in 1997, the third Koenigsegg CC prototype was developed. With help from Dag Bölenius, who fed in the data from his virtual software programme, the chassis and component designs were improved. The body was also now slightly more streamlined than before thanks to headlight covers and a more raked windscreen. Build quality remained mediocre as the car was still being focused on the technical aspects and the car would remain unfinished. The Audi engine was carried over from the first prototype and the vehicle would undergo testing again. The car now had a carbon fibre monocoque which Christian have had it made by a British company with Autoclave experts. This kept the weight down and the car had lost several kilos of weight compared with the old steel tubular frame chassis monocoque.

And the car had party trick up it’s sleeves - Dihedral synchro-helix Actuation doors. This would go on becoming another signature for all Koenigsegg cars to follow in the future. These doors swivel outside and rotate forwards at the same time. The idea behind the dihedrals doors was that in a tight perpendicular parking space, it would be difficult to open the doors without hitting other cars as the car was low and wide which made the doors themselves very wide. To negate this, the dihedral doors were created and also gave a signature look towards the car. The mechanism used a swing arm on a geared pivot and a hydraulic actuator which would apply pressure to release open the door. However, as this was the first execution of the mechanism, the doors couldn’t swiveled by 90 degrees due to the mounting of the hinges and it was a two step process meaning the doors had to pushed out first and then swivel forward which Christian demised this idea of a 2 step process. While this still created a lot of room for ingress and egress, Christian knew it could be something he could perfect it in the production version.

Christian was delighted with the CC no.3 prototype performance. He went to Audi and told the executives about the engine and the performance of the CC stating he wants to put the car into production. But it didn’t go well. So he found a Subaru 4.0L Flat-12 engine to be a perfect match for his car. Here’s how he described it in his AMA:

Our first prototype, finished in 1996, had a standard Audi V8 with a standard Audi V8 transaxle. I didn’t have the ambition at that time for us to build our own engine from scratch, though I didn’t want to just have a standard Audi V8, either. I wanted to tune it, to take it to 550-600hp. So I went to Audi and I said “Hi, I’m Christian and I’m going to build sports cars. Can you supply me with engines?” and they were surprisingly positive about it – until I mentioned that I was going to tune it.

We had a lot of discussions back and forth and they were interested in doing business, but they weren’t interested in their engines being tuned by others. We almost found a back-channel through an industry supplier in Denmark and we even signed an engine supply contract thinking that we’d be OK buying them this way, but Audi heard about it and shut that avenue down, too.

So we had this prototype, based around a particular setup that we thought we could use and we had no engine supplier. We could have sued but I didn’t want to go down that path.

I met a guy who knew Carlo Chiti via a chain of friends. Chiti ran an engine company called Motori Moderni. They were in a bit of trouble but they used to do Formula 1 engines for Minardi. They had this boxer-12 engine, made in cooperation with Subaru, that had hardly ever raced. They had trouble with the weight and getting the diffusers to work with the layout of the F1 car once the engine was in.

The 12 cylinder engine wasn’t successful in Formula 1 but Motori Moderni had great success building other engines for Alfa Romeo to use in DTM racing. They had proven their worth, so they were worth talking to.

Unfortunately, around this time, Carlo Chiti died and the company filed for bankruptcy. We had received two engines from them (which we still have) but once again, we found ourselves with no engine supplier.

We went and met with them and they were very open. They said they could modify their 3.5 litre flat-12 engine for us. Similar engines had been used in offshore boat racing with twin turbos on them, so we were confident enough in their durability. They put together a 3.8 litre flat-12 and they lowered the RPM from 12000 to 9000. They put different camshafts on it, they stroked it, put in longer intake tracts. It was set up to get 580hp at 9000rpm and I have the dyno tests from where we ran that engine.

When we first designed the Koengisegg (CC) monocoque, it was designed for that engine and it was the first engine we put in there. The engine mount positions for that engine are still used in the Agera today.

In early 1997, I ended up winning an auction to buy some of the company’s assets. I got all the tools, the drawings, the castings and some spare parts for the engines. Some of that went up in flames at the old factory. We thought that maybe, with all that equipment, we could build our own engines from Chiti’s designs but when we got the equipment back to Sweden and started sorting it all out, it was a nightmare. There we no computerized drawings. It was all drawn by hand. A lot of the tooling was old and made from wood and it was quite beaten up.

Would the engine have been viable for the future? Certainly at first. It was quite amazing, actually. The whole engine block was under the centre of the rear axle, which gave us a super-low centre of gravity and looked very cool when you opened the rear hood of the car. There was no vibration whatsoever, which is why we decided to bolt it to the monocoque – it was wide, low and solid, so it acted just like a chassis member.

The downside of that engine is that it would never have taken us to the level we are at now. It would have been good up to about 750hp with turbo, but that would have been it.

After the failure of the Subaru flat-12 engine, Christian was running out of ideas. He contacted an American Supercharging company which would supercharge Ford engine and sell as a crate engine. Christian got hold of the engine, a Coyote 4.7L V8 with an aftermarket supercharger and test fitted in their pre-production CC prototype. But immediately, there was a big problem - the crate engine was build for competition purpose meaning it needed high octane race fuel and it blew the rings given the high compression ratio and standard fuel they ran the engine on. So they found themselves with another challenge. They had to modify the internals to make it work or buy another engine. Christian realised that with almost no money left, he had to make do with what he had.

Again we saw ourselves with an engine that was no good, but we had to make it work. Changing the engine for the fourth time was not an option: we had to adapt. - Christian Von Koenigsegg

The work began by changing the internals of the engine. They had to make the engine run accordingly to the given restrictions of emissions and power usability. They bought the appropriate parts that suited their engine. They changed the pistons, piston rings, connecting rods, bearings, ECU and put on another supercharger. Then they fitted it with their own in house designed air intakes, exhaust system, flywheel, clutch, dry sump and intercooler. At this point they got their first patent with the “Rocket” catalyst, which created a natural overflow over the pre-catalyst to reduce return pressure at high revs. This gave the CC an extra 150 hp compared to previous homologated solutions at the time.

"In short, we started designing our own things and building the engines from scratch here in the factory. Some people think we bought Ford engines and put them in our car, but that never happened. We use modified Ford parts, allied to our own parts, in these first engines. - Christian Von Koenigsegg

With the engine running, the now modified 4.7L supercharged Ford Coyote V8 was producing 655 bhp. The car would undergo more a through test session before making the final verdict for production. Koenigsegg started his work on the body. With lessons learnt from the CC prototype 1,2 and 3, they would go on refining the shape, adhering to Christian’s and Crafoord’s philosophy of an efficient and minimalistic design approach. With a supercharged V8 engine, Koenigsegg named the new car the CC8Swith 8 designating the cylinders and S designating Supercharged induction.

The work began in the workshop where the full size clay model of the CC8S pre-production model would be built based off the 1:5 model Crafoord and Christian had designed back in 1993 but with some changes being down to it down the line. This project would take over a week to finish and Koenigsegg ensured there’s room for addition of features he’d thought about patenting even before the company had flourished. The finished clay shell ended up with a lot of changes done to it such as the tri-circular headlights and taillights, which would later become a signature of the car for some time.

Koenigsegg was still operating at a very very low budget, they still needed the public attention and a PR to get the attention and in order to get their name out and get the cash in to complete the CC8S prototype, Koenigsegg decided to head out at the Cannes Film Festival later in 1997. The Koenigsegg CC prototype was displayed at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival where the reception was met with satisfactory test results and media coverage bought them money enough to fund for completion of their first pre-production car.

In the next blogpost, you’ll be reading about the all the production cars and racing programmes initiated by Koenigsegg.

Sources:

http://www.scalemodelcarz.com/enter/Koenigsegg-CCX-1-18-By-AUTOart-An-inspiring-man-Christian-von-Koenigsegg
https://www.norwegian.com/magazine/features/2016/03/this-man-could-revolutionise-the-motor-industry
https://billionairetoys.com/action_figure/christian-von-koenigsegg
http://theitalianjunkyard.blogspot.in/2011/03/sweden-aint-that-cold-christian-von.html
http://veryday.com/case/koenigsegg
http://actualinfo.website/2016/01/30/how-a-beer-brewer-stood-at-the-cradle-of-koenigsegg
https://www.elva.com/news/20140208-svenharry.php
http://www.bilbaneforumet.se/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2337&p=60152&st=0&start=0&sk=t&sd=a
https://jalopnik.com/how-koenigsegg-nearly-built-subarus-flat-12-f1-engine-1790634539
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