Welcome everyone, to the Dream Factory. Yeah, Ferrari's got its famous branded
archway at the factory in Maranello, but Koenigsegg has some flags
and a white door in a place called Ängelholm, in Sweden. But, behind that door they make
the very fastest cars in the world. Today is very special indeed. We're gonna get a chance to go in there,
see how those cars are made. We're even gonna get a tour
of a brand new car, the replacement for the Agera, no less. From the big boss,
Christian von Koenigsegg. I feel a little bit like a kid
that's found a golden ticket today and this is Willy Wonka's factory. Finding the factory is easy. Take the turn at the Saab Viggen jet,
how cool is that? Keep going past the surface-to-air missile and keep your eyes peeled
for an enormous green shed. In fact, it's an aircraft hangar
that used to belong to the Ghosts, Sweden's oldest fighter plane squadron. Hence Koenigsegg logo. Admire the wonderful and extremely orange
CCXR in reception, and you're there. There you are. Yes, so, apparently Koenigsegg
doesn't trust me with my jeans and my belt around the new car. Because it's just about to go to Geneva, so they've given us these rather
fetching trousers to put on. I think I might have been a bit optimistic
with the waist size. No, no, there we go, snug.
What do you think? This is the Jesko, Koenigsegg's
all-new replacement for the Agera, having the finishing touches applied
before shipped off to the Geneva show. In fact, by now it's been fully revealed, so here's a couple of clean shots
for your benefit. Oh, look, guess who has showed up
to give us a personal tour of the new car? This is it, then. This is the new one? Yes, yes, this is our new baby. New baby and I love the fact
that this has to be shipped off -to the Geneva show tomorrow?
-Tomorrow night. And as far as I can tell
it doesn't look finished. I'm pretty, pretty confident. Usually, it looks less finished than this
when we go to the Geneva two days before, If you're confident, I'm confident. -We'll see you next week.
-Exactly, yeah. If there's a big hole on your stand
where this car should be, we'll know it didn't go so well. I thought I'd start with the name. So, the name of this new car is Jesko. The working name for this project
for the last three years, has been rhino-rack. It's like this Norse...
Yeah, the end of the world. Our sales director, Andreas Petri,
who's a very good friend of my father, he said, "We should honour your father". I mean, he was very instrumental
in helping me in the early years. He's also an entrepreneur by heart
and he saw it was a tough struggle for me, so, he came on board for a couple of years
and helped me figure things out. and was very instrumental in that. He doesn't know still,
so, we're hoping that can stay intact. So, is this gonna be Koenigsegg's
300 mile an hour car? So, not this particular version. This is what we call the Jesko
and it's a track focused car, with 880 kilos of down force, which is massive I mean,
for any hypercar mega car and it will create too much drag
for that kind of speed. But there is a version of this car
which we call the Jesko 300 or let's say Jesko Ambition 300, where we have a slightly different
wing package, a slightly smaller front splitter, different arrangement in the front bonnet
so we actually can store your roof there. -This kind of track focus car cannot.
-Okay. And that car, theoretically,
according to our simulations is capable of going faster than
300 miles per hour. So, you've run the simulation. Is that something that you're interested
in pursuing in real life? I know that there's an American gentleman
called John Hennessey, who's being very vocal about the fact
that he's going after 300. Well, good for him.
You know, these things... It took us a long time to
do our last attempt. You have to find a venue,
you have to find... Well, you have to use a car
in this case was a customer car... You have to find a driver
who is willing to do it. It's a lot of things that comes about. You need a tyre manufacturer
that supports your effort. And it's very dangerous and scary. Like, we really have to consider
if it's worth it. We had wildlife running around,
birds sitting on the road... Anything can happen at these speeds. It's detrimental that we kind of station
the camera halfway down the road and after a couple of weeks
going through the material, well there's a big bird sitting
on the road and it flew away. Then 10 seconds later boom the car came.
Whoa. We set everything up for
at least 310 miles per hour, so there is a little bit of buffer
for error as well. Dare I ask how much? Yeah, so they start at 2.8 million dollars
plus tax, and X works and then you can add things
on top of that. We put in a huge effort
to make the best car we can for the purpose it's intended for. It costs an absolute fortune
but it doesn't mean we make a fortune. We're a profitable company,
like any other normal company. But not more. It actually costs that much to make them,
create them and obligate them. So, what we've done compared to the RS
is we have elongated the wheelbase, by elongating the carbon fibre monocoque. We made a little bit of room here,
a little bit taller inside. So the glass areas
are a little bit bigger. It's to be able to catch
the short basketball players. Underneath here we also have...
Like we pioneered on the 1 to 1. Active moving flaps. On this one it's bigger than ever before. You can see them if you lie down there.
They're hydraulically operated. When we want maximum downforce,
they're up. And as we gain speed and downforce
increases more than we want to we push them down and bleed off
the downforce and reduce drag. And we do that together
with the right height control, bump and rebound control
and rear wing angle. The break here you can see
we have this big wing operating also as an air break. And it also bleeds off when you go faster. Yeah, your classic top mounted wing,
of course. Yeah, so it's a very efficient way. The underside is what creates downforce. To have that clean
makes it more efficient. And this curve of the wing
is actually to follow regulations not sticking outside of the car. But I understand you've made life hard for
yourself and developed your own gearbox. Correct. One of our engineers who has
been working here for 23 years, a really clever guy, he said,
"Why don't we do this, this, this, this?" That seems interesting.
It was a bit, like, can it be that simple? Then we started calculating and it seemed
like this will actually work. Then we just went all in a year ago
and started developing this gearbox. So, it's like a derailing system
on a bike, more or less. You have two or three gears in the front and six, seven, eight or whatever
in the rear. Together they can combine 25, 28 gears,
but there aren't 28 gear sets. The onboard computer
will calculate how many gears can I shift without over revving
and still having the rev range. And it does that, like that. So, given the new turbos,
given the crankshaft and the firing order. and the new cylinder heads and everything, we achieved 1280 horsepower
on 95 octane fuel, from a 5 litre engine, with super good response like... From just your standard petrol forecourt? Exactly or 91 octane in the US. Then if you fill up a full tank of E85,
you have 1600 horsepower. Is there space for an all electric
hype car like this in the future? Yeah, potentially.
I mean, if we take the Regera, if we tear out the combustion engine, it is 800 volt, series produced,
700 horsepower electric car. We could just put more batteries in there and then another motor
to have 1200 horsepower. And the rest would already work. To do what the Regera can do, if you made a full electric car
with the range and power and so on, it would be 600 kilos heavier
according to our calculations. But as soon as the BEV
can flat-out beat a hybrid, maybe we sacrifice a sound
and we do a full BEV. But we don't see that
in the next couple of years, or the foreseeable future even. What's interesting, the tyre is actually
2 times heavier than the wheel. Tyre manufacturers need to up their game. They're slowing you down. -How much for a set of these?
-It's about $65,000. -What! Are the carbon wheels optional?
-They are. Yes. That's the standard wheel,
let's say the first version of it. We're still tweaking it a little bit. We're gonna to slightly carve out
some more material from here to optimize the weight even further. But that's the basic look of the wheel. Some would say that for $3 million,
you should get the fancy wheels for free. You can always try. Okay, throw in a set of wheels for free
and you've got yourself a deal. You can always try. Here's a little bit of a Brucey bonus
that we weren't expecting today. I suppose these sort of things happen when you spend a day
at the Koenigsegg Factory. Basically, they needed to do a little bit
of tuning work on one of the Regeras. One of the 80 cars of their building. They said, "Jack, do you want to jump
in the passenger seat? We're gonna head down the runway
and blast about in a Regera". Well, I wasn't about to say no. This is Koenigsegg's hybrid,
so 1500 horsepower, 700 horsepower electric,
1100 from the combustion engine but they reach peak power
at different points so 1500 total. Very, very excited about this. This is a 2, 2.5 million pound car
and they're going to let me in it. See in a bit Well, that was quite an experience. That is my first time in a Koenigsegg,
actually I don't think I'm going to forget it
in a hurry. Don't know if you saw but we pretty much
did 0 to 300 kilometres an hour, then hard on the brakes back to zero. In not very much space at all.
I was literally hanging out the seatbelt. You expect this thing
to go ludicrously fast but you probably don't expect it
to break quite like that. What a thing! It's one way to wake
yourself up in the morning, isn't it? All right, so this, apparently,
is where it all begins. This is the carbon fibre workshop,
if you like. Koenigsegg builds 30 to 40 percent of
the smaller carbon fibre parts themselves. The rest are built
in the company they own in Spain, but this is where it all begins. Here you've got the rolls of carbon fibre,
this is the really pretty stuff. You see it's got
a really nice finish there. That's the stuff you see
on the outside of the car. This slightly rougher, bit gnarlier,
that's the stuff you don't see. But it's the same structure,
it's the same strength. Basically, you go to that computer
bring up the part you need, fire up this machine,
which will then cut out the shape you need and number it from the carbon fibre roll. Stay with me on this. The part then comes over here,
they go into one of these cupboards and find something like this. An aluminium mould and that's what
they build the carbon fibre part around. They layer it up over there. There's a pattern, so the people making it
can't really go wrong. I'll show you what I mean here,
they've got a nice little part. so the bits where you don't need
too much carbon fibre, you don't need it to be that strong,
it's relatively thin. The bit here where you need
all the structural strength, you can see there's many,
many more layers here. it's a thing of beauty
but this is high-end engineering. That's one of the first carbon fibre
wheels. they ever produced in 2010. There's a shelf over here
I want you to see. It has some really cool parts on it. More wheels. I'll show you. I am a weakling and I can pick that one up
with ease. But perhaps even more extraordinary
is these steering wheels. All carbon fibre, absolutely beautiful
and weighs about as much as air. That is extraordinarily light,
I wish you could feel that. Look, as if by magic here's someone
actually making a carbon fibre wheel. So these are the parts
that the machine cuts out. There are 650 of these apparently. About 50 hours of work
goes into each wheel. and when you talk about a handmade process
this is handmade to the nth degree. So skilled, so beautiful as well. You get up close and can see the intricacy
of the layers of the carbon fibre. But you wonder why this stuff costs so
much but it's so labour intensive. Alright, so, this is where
the carbon fibre parts come next. They're bagged up here
by these skilled gentlemen here, Vacuum packed and then taken
to be baked up here in this enormous cylindrical oven. I'm told about four to five hours,
120 degrees they go in here. Ironically, that's the same amount
of time it takes to do a good slow roast leg of lamb. Alright, now we're talking,
Getting to the really big stuff. This is a chassis effectively, built up of three or four big main
structural elements. You got the floor pan down here. You've got the fuel cell,
so that is effectively these side pods. It runs across the back,
runs down the other side. Super strong, strongest bit of the car,
so it keeps the fuel low, and keeps it nice and safe. You got your roll bar here
and this windscreen section. And if you ever want a demonstration
of just how strong carbon fibre is, look how relatively delicate that looks. But you don't have to worry about it,
that is absolutely rock-solid. In fact, this is the strongest chassis
in the business. 65,000 Newton metres per degree
torsional stiffness, More than a Chiron, take that Bugatti. It's starting to look
like an actual car now, isn't it? So, this is, I'm told, the bit
where they pre fit the panels around a wooden buck here. So, it's the last chance to check
that all the panels fit together properly. That you haven't got panel gaps
you could drive a bus through. This one's not looking too bad actually. And it's also because it's the only chance
before the cars finished and painted that the panels will be lined up, it's a chance for the painters to mark out
where the stripes are going to be. So, you'll see a few grey lines
up here and here. You wouldn't want to be painting
those stripes on individual panels and then praying that they lined up. No, you've got to do it now. It's also a good opportunity to talk about
the different types of naked carbon you can have. You'll see down here,
this is true naked carbon. It's essentially the epoxy resin layer
sanded back till it's raw carbon. Don't go too far
or you'll ruin the whole part. Then it's just polished up. The other option is clear coat. So this is just a raw panel here,
but you could have a clear coat on here. That is just a case of painting
on the clear coat. It's becoming more and more popular
with customers, but if you're a traditionalist, you may want your car painted
with actual paint and that begins over here. So, you'll see a full set of panels
here, Regera panels, that are all taped up
and prepped for paint. More grey stripes up there. You'll see this guy's obviously got
some sort of graphics going on their car. And this is where it all happens. A couple of prep bays
and the final blue box over there. That's where the parts
are actually painted. To paint an entire Koenigsegg,
I'm told, takes 600 to 800 hours, which is just absolutely mind-blowing. But when you learn what the panels
have to go through, it makes sense. Prep takes ages
before you've even started, whether you're having naked carbon
or painting it, you have to clear coat it, sand that down,
clear coat it again, sand that down, clear coat it again, sand that down... Then it's ready for the paint,
so say you're having a metallic paint, three coats of colour,
three coats of metallic and then three coats of clear coat
on top of that. Absolutely mind-blowing. You wouldn't want to get it wrong,
would you? So, this area is where the cars come
to get a good old spit and polish. You'll see here the tub, the chassis. Pretty much anything that's visible
is going to get a good old polish up. Some things that aren't visible
get a polish as well. We have a look here So, these are the aluminium components. You'll see this is how they come in,
a little bit mottled. Then they're polished up,
then sent away for a surface coating. Then they come back
and they're polished up again. You're not allowed to touch those on pain
of death without a pair of gloves on. Over here. So, these guys are polishing up
those smaller carbon components, the smaller aluminium components. So, the paint shop 600 to 800 hours,
here, another 200 hours of polishing. Come check this out. Look, it looks
a little bit like London Underground map, but actually this is how Koenigsegg builds
the wiring looms that go into each car. So, it's obviously it's mapped out
on this bit of paper, to make sure you don't miss a single wire. The complication blows my mind
a bit, but it's an incredible thing. I'm told that if you have a CAD drawing
of a Koenigsegg and you take away the body panels
and the engine transmission and the interior and everything,
you're left with just the wires. You've got this incredible skeleton
of the car left over. That would be quite a thing
to hang on your wall, wouldn't it? I wonder what that does. Ah, yes, now we get to the oily bits. the v8 engine, the five litre V8 engine
90 degree, producing over 1100 horsepower
in the Regera RS and the Regera. Unfortunately, no one's working
on this one, but we do have three engines they built
earlier over here in the stands. How do I know this is the Regera?
Well, look at the back here. This is the giveaway, isn't it? Two electric motors
with the direct drive unit in the middle. This is what they call the Hydra-Coup. It's the thing
that blends the electric power and the combustion power together to give you that a smooth output. Quite a complicated thing, isn't it? Can't wait to find out how they put this
in an actual car. Okay and on to the actual
production line now. Off to the side you'll see these
little bays over here, that's where various components
are assembled. So, for example a rear clamshell
over there that's having its wiring. The various systems put in
for the rear wing. But this is the main event, this is the chassis receiving its wires
and hydraulics and cooling systems. And you'll notice these
high-voltage orange cables. Probably don't want to touch those. This is the first car in the world
to have an 800 volt system. The second? That'll be the Porsche Taycan. As we move along the cars become
progressively more built. This one it's got an engine.
Look there it is, nestled in there. Barely believable that there's room
for all those components. Here are the electric motors at the back. The direct drive system. Moving along, yes this one
has gained the high voltage inverters. The cooling systems for the inverters
adding layer upon layer of complication. You start to see, these are the struts
for the rear clamshell. Hydraulic struts that can pop it open
at the touch of a button, Will see the tubs
all nicely polished up now and looking presentable
for their new owners. These are the struts of course, for those
amazing electrically deployable doors. Earlier when we had a little ride
in the Regera, I fell a little bit in love
with that hinge, there I said it. And here's one almost finished. Almost finished,
almost ready for its panels. I'll give it the patented
Top Gear once-over. Yeah, that's good to go, boys. Okay, so here we are, here we are. The final station, the finished product. You may recognise this car, it's the one we were riding around in
on the runway this morning and it has made its way back
into the factory. You may also have noticed that
we skipped a few steps in the process. That's because the bit
in the production line, the end of the line where the panels
are put on and the interior is inserted, and the finishing touches are applied
is over there. It contains two or three customer cars and the customers don't want us to see
before they see their own car. Fair enough,
we've got to respect their wishes. But anyway, this is where it ends up. There's a few interesting things
to look at in here actually. The first is this tape all over it just to ensure the test drivers and me don't add scratches to the chassis
and the paint. Covers on the seats, bubble wrap
on the steering wheel like that. And this film here
that looks a little bit unattractive, but that's just to protect the car
while it's being run in, so it doesn't get handed over
to the customer covered in stone chips. So, there you go,
that is how a hyper car is made. And believe me,
I was as sceptical as you are that any car on the world
could be worth 2 to 3 million quid, but you come here, when you see the skill,
the craftsmanship and the love that goes into all
the components that make this car, well, then you start to believe.
