Koenigsegg – “Something New” at the Geneva Motor Show

The Koenigsegg Trevita. The last 'New' Koenigsegg

We’ve been having a chat with Koenigsegg about their plans, and they’ve told us they will have something new at the Geneva Motor Show. But what?

The last time we had major news from Koenigsegg – apart from the ongoing Koenigsegg buys Saab saga of the last few months – was when the Koenigsegg Quant was shown at the Geneva Motor Show in 2009. Apart, that is, from the Koenigsegg Trevita (pictured) which was a very low-key reveal and amounted to not much more than a fancy colour carbon weave for the bodywork. Clever, but not likely to get buyers queueing at the door.

So now Koenigsegg is out of play for Saab, we’ve been expecting some news from Christian and the gang on the Quant – or something new – but we’ve heard nothing. We’d made a mental note to get in touch and see if they would tell us anything newsworthy, but as things do it got put to one side to concentrate on the daily grind.

What nudged us to call Koenigsegg this morning was the news that the Quant is going back to Geneva 2010, but not as a Koenigsegg. It’s going to show as the NLV Quant. Same deal as last year – presumably moved on a bit – but without Koenigsegg’s name attached. Which seemed odd, even though NLV were partners with Koenigsegg on the Quant.

We first asked Koenigsegg about the Quant and why they were out of the picture. They said:

Koenigsegg was a supplier to NLV for the Quant Project. The Quant was never a Koenigsegg car, as some media might have seen it. We were glad to supply and support the project, but it was never ours, nor did we portray it as such.

That NLV has moved on by themselves, is therefore completely natural and has nothing do with Koenigsegg’s operations. We wish them all the success for the future and follow the project with great interest.

Which is an interesting take on what we all believed was a Koenigsegg. But to be fair to Koenigsegg we’ve dug out what we reported at Geneva last year, and Koenigsegg are right. We said last year:

But actually, this isn’t all Christian’s idea. The project stems from a commission to Koenigsegg from NLV Solar AG, a fellow Swedish firm, to ‘develop and design a car of the future’. The result is the Koenigsegg Quant – a four seater electric car utilising NLV’s solar electric technology.

So with that out of the way we naturally asked, ‘Is there going to be a new car at Geneva?’ The answer was:

Yes, something new at Geneva.

Now you can read in to that what you like. At face value it’s saying there will be a new car at Geneva. Period. But you could read it as simply ‘something’ new at Geneva. It could be as simple as a new colour weave for a CCX and a fancy new name.

But our money’s on some sort of electric hybrid Koenigsegg CCX.

Koenigsegg said we’d know soon enough.