Top Gear’s back on television tonight with a whole new look, a whole new base,
a whole new feel and lots of new ideas that have never been seen on
television. Well, that was the plan. All through the winter we were racking
our brains and burning the midnight oil as we thought up new ways to keep
BBC2’s most popular car programme fresh and entertaining.
First things first. We decided to build a studio and track in the Cotswolds
but some local people objected on the basis that our reasonably priced car
would cause “pollution”. So we ditched that idea. And came up with a new
one.
It’s not that we’re small-minded or petty in any way, but we’ve decided to
stage a competition to find Britain’s noisiest car. There’ll be a number of
heats, held every Sunday in the summer in the very village where people had
objected to our plans. How clever’s that? And to get round the problem of
our studio looking a bit tired and familiar, we got a new one on the same
site. This, we were told, was 50% bigger than the old one, which caused us
all to go down with a nasty dose of what I call Christmas Tree Syndrome.
This manifests itself in men who, when they go out to buy a yuletide tree,
imagine that their house is much bigger than is the case. And therefore come
home with something that’s 14ft too tall. So we filled our new studio with
all kinds of static displays and decorative items that looked fantastic but,
as we discovered in the pilot, left no room for an audience, which was bad,
or cameras, which was worse. So we took all the flotsam out again and now,
guess what? Our new studio looks pretty much identical to the old one.
So if you tune in tonight, it’ll be the usual diet of cool wall, news, road
tests, bickering and Richard Hammond’s teeth. The only real difference is
that I’m a little more bald and slightly fatter. Films? Well, we road test
the world’s first convertible people carrier, which was awful, since we made
it ourselves. We see which is faster, a car or a canoe. And I get to thunder
about shouting “power” in the subject of this morning’s column. A Koenigsegg
CCX.
A what? Well put simply a Koenigsegg is a Swedish supercar which, while
crossing America on the Gumball rally, picked up the biggest speeding ticket
ever issued: 242mph. And that was the old, less powerful model. The CCX is
much, much faster.
The company was started by a chap called Christian von Koenigsegg, who left
school with the engineering qualifications of a duck but a burning desire to
be a businessman. So, with a friend, he converted a room at home, bought a
fax machine with his pocket money and registered a company.
Great, except the company he formed didn’t have anything to manufacture or
sell. The pair soldiered on for a while, staring at their dormant fax
machine until one day Christian discovered the people of Estonia had nothing
to spend their new money on. “Aha,” thought our young Swede. “This is a job
for my fax machine.”
Immediately he decided that what the Estonians wanted more than anything was
chickens. So he faxed a supplier in America and in months was a Baltic
Colonel Sanders. And then he started buying carrier bags that had been
produced with misprints, and selling those in Estonia too, where Tecso and
Adsa were considered every bit as chic as Cocoa Channel and YLS.
At the age of 22, Christian was a wealthy young man and decided to indulge a
childhood fantasy for supercars — not by buying one but by getting out the
pen and paper and building one.
The engine selected was an Audi V8, but as the car took shape Audi announced
it would not supply any small company with its technology. So the team found
an Italian racing company that made a V12. That went out of business, which
brought Koenigsegg to the Ford V8. Then the factory burnt down. And all of
Christian’s hair fell out. Today I have more sticking out of my nose than he
has on his entire body.
Even so the man soldiered on, bringing his agonisingly beautiful wife into the
company and even employing his father, until in 2000 they launched the CC8.
And then the CCR, and now with their own Swedish-made twin-supercharged 4.7
litre V8, the CCX. This is a very powerful engine. On normal petrol you get
806bhp. But here’s the good bit. If you tune it to run on eco-friendly
biofuel, you get more than 900bhp. So what we’re looking at here is a car
that’s very much in the same league as the Bugatti Veyron.
Sort of. It’s not hard to make a 250mph car. You just need lots of power and a
slippery body. But it is hard to keep a 250mph car on the ground. And stop
it. You need to spend a lot of money and time working on these things.
And while Christian has a few bob, he’s not in the same league as VW, which
went to the ends of the earth when it was developing the 1,001bhp Veyron.
This shows. Up past 190mph, the back end of the Koenigsegg starts to weave
and you get the distinct impression that if you go faster, the weaving will
become so severe you’ll be rolling through the Pearly Gates in a big Swedish
fireball.
So you brake. And now the front end starts to weave too. And you’re making a
strange guttural noise that scientists would call the sound of fear.
Christian apologised and back at his mobile workshop fiddled with the brake
balance, which improved things considerably. But I didn’t dare head for the
200mph marker again. To be fair, the Top Gear producer had insisted the car
was brought to our track before it was properly finished. That’s why the
computers kept overheating, causing a monstrous misfire. In a few months
these issues will be addressed.
Hopefully. But even if they aren’t, you’re just left with the supercar norm.
The Ferrari Enzo needs a new clutch after three full-bore starts. And my
Ford GT has not exactly been a paragon of reliability. I pushed its starter
button yesterday and the only thing that started was the rear offside
indicator. So that’s back at the menders again.
So what have we got on the Koenigsegg that’s good? Well it’s a very pretty
car, partly because it doesn’t have any wings to keep it on the ground at
200mph. And thanks to a new liftout roof
panel there’s acres of space inside for the American basketball players that
Christian hopes will form the backbone of his customer base. It is also
tremendously exciting to drive. The noise is hard to explain. There’s a lot
of it, and in some ways it sounds like an amplified version of that sound
you make when you hit the brakes at 193mph. A sort of AAAAAAAARGH.
Then there’s the fire. When you lift off, huge jets of flame shoot out of the
exhaust as unburnt fuel is ignited by the heat of the pipes. I liked this
feature a lot. It’d certainly scare away the tailgaters.
Not that there’ll be many since this superlight, all carbon-fibre car goes
from 0-60 in a little over 3sec and will, I’m told, hit 250mph. One thing,
though: avoid trying your luck on corners. There’s tons and tons of grip but
when that’s gone you will spin. There is no middle ground, no chance to
solve the problem with a dab of opposite lock. Try to be cocky with this car
and it’ll kill you.
A lot of the excitement comes from this. Many of today’s supercars feel a
little bit sanitised, a little bit smooth. Even a Pagani Zonda is as docile
and as user friendly as an ageing labrador. The Koenigsegg is not. It’s a
terrier with doberman genes in its teeth. It’s a supercharged great white, a
fearsome beast, a killer, a man hunter.
There’s a chance, though, that it may be the fastest car to go round the Top
Gear track. You’ll find out tonight. So will I.
