The Swedish Supercar Maker Aiming to Fight Ferrari at 249 MPH

Over the next three years, Ferrari NV aims to double profits by dramatically boosting sales of fast and fabulous cars such as the $1.8 million Monza, the $2.1 million LaFerrari Aperta, and the Purosangue, a sport utility vehicle that promises to be one of the fastest rides on or off the road. To get there, the Italian manufacturer will have to contend with Christian von Koenigsegg.

Since 2002 his company, Koenigsegg Automotive AB, has sold about a dozen hand-built cars annually for roughly $2 million apiece. He expects to increase his yearly production to hundreds of vehicles by 2022, almost all of them a new model priced around $1 million. And a few years after that, he hopes to boost output to thousands of autos a year—which would make his company a serious threat to Ferrari and other makers of supercars such as Lamborghini and Bugatti. “Some people already choose our cars instead of a Ferrari,” von Koenigsegg says on a tour of his factory on the flat green outskirts of the Swedish town of Angelholm. While the car is “still incredibly expensive, the potential sales volume increases massively.”