A $590,000 Wild Goose.(column)(Column)

Byline: Matt Davis

The Fates are keeping me and Koenigsegg apart.

As some of you know, the Swedish automotive scene isn't simply all about Volvos and Saabs. Drive south from Goteborg toward Malmo along the E6/E20 and you'll find the most exciting Scandinavian proposal for road travel. Maybe it's a little too exciting.

For a couple of years I've been trying to get a drive in a Koenigsegg. First I was pursuing the original CC 8S (as in Competition Coupe V8 Supercharged) and speaking directly with company leader Christian von Koenigsegg. This trail started to go chilly so I asked him to level with me. He said the only car for possible press drives was parked over at Lamborghini while their chief test driver (also Koenigsegg's, as well as Pagani's) Loris Bicocchi was dialing in the CC 8S's Ohlins suspension for even greater high-speed stability. It seemed a Sunday high-speed run at Nardo in southeastern Italy was in the offing, and Bicocchi didn't want any chance of finishing in the bushes.

What Koenigsegg did suggest, though, was that I join them at Nardo as soon as that Sunday came up. I was to bear witness to the end of the McLaren F1's high-speed record reign among homologated series production cars (3.2 seconds from 0 to 60 mph, 240.1-mph sustained top speed set in 1998). Fantastic. So I waited until this too cooled like frozen vodka.

Then, there I was in Geneva for the 2004 motor show last March. What do I see but the final version of the new Koenigsegg CCR, with von Koenigsegg beckoning to me for a chat.

Whether it can be officially stated or not, and despite the fact that the CC 8S has replaced the McLaren F1 in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most powerful production car, the CC 8S couldn't hack it when it came to outperforming the F1 with authority. So, we have ...