This Maker of $4 Million Sports Cars Is Weighing an IPO
Koenigsegg says it’s in no hurry, but might want extra cash to boost production of its road rockets that can hit 250 mph.
Halldora and Christian von Koenigsegg with the CC850 at their company’s headquarters in Angelholm, Sweden.
Photographer: Dana Ullman/Bloomberg
By any conventional business logic, Koenigsegg Automotive AB shouldn’t exist. Building a manufacturer of multimillion-dollar sports cars in a sparsely populated corner of southern Sweden—far from the racing circuits of Italy and France, supplier clusters in Germany, or California’s billionaire enclaves—sounds less like a strategy than a dare.
Yet at a disused airfield a six-hour drive south of Stockholm, Christian and Halldora von Koenigsegg have created one of the world’s most technologically sophisticated automakers. Koenigsegg designs its own engines, transmissions and battery systems, not to mention low-slung carbon-fiber bodies that look like they warrant a speeding ticket even when sitting still. “It probably would have been easier to build the company somewhere else,” says Halldora, the company’s chief operating officer. “But this is our home.”