Original subtitles

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[Harris] The first time a child can run--you might remember

that first time that you ran and you felt the air

accelerate over your hair and your ears and you thought,

wow, that's a rush.

[Spinelli] It's not about going fast.

It's about sort of being fast.

It's about--it's about kind of elevating human experience

into places that we've never been able to go before.

[Neil] You don't feel the car very subtly, very gently

bringing you back into kind of control.

This, I think is the biggest change of

the hypercar era is the accessibility of

a thousand horsepower or whatever it is.

[Okulski] I'm not gonna say no to an open runway

and a thousand horsepower car so we go down. We go about 180.

Then, he tells me to slam on the brakes and take my hands

off the wheel while I'm doing it in a car I'd never driven,

in a place I've never been, going 180 miles an hour.

But if the guy who has his name on the car

is telling me to do something, I'm gonna do it.

[Greenawalt] Capturing that imagination,

the spirit, what the enthusiast wants

and what an engineer wants and what an artist wants,

it's really at the cutting edge of everything.

And that what makes it so amazing.

It's--it's beyond art. It's beyond engineering.

It's beyond sport. It's beyond racing.

It's all of those things together.

[Roy] So as long as one manufacturer is making a car

beyond what anyone else can, a child looking at it will say,

"something better is possible."

[Koenigsegg] I think things that are kind of impersonated

and embodies positive emotions and that

you work closely with and put your love into,

they kind of come alive.

And I think, when you're in the car

and it's done the proper way like most racecars are

and they really feel like an extension of yourself.

[Levi] What is a hypercar?

There may be no better way to ignite an argument

than to try and define what a hypercar is.

A car whose only purpose is to inspire awe in every aspect.

The fastest, the most powerful,

the rarest, the most striking,

the most thoughtfully designed, the most cutting edge.

And even then, that definition only takes us part of the way.

The hypercar, like the supercar before it,

is the expression, in automotive form, of tomorrow today.

These cars do things that, from a power train

and energy efficiency standpoint,

it was science fiction ten years ago.

It's the car that's the ultimate expression

of what they can do with technology.

Really, it's like creating the Iron Man suit as a car.

[Levi] A car whose price tag pales only in comparison

to the desire it provokes among those who can afford it.

[Harris] They're big projects.

There are hundreds of millions,

if not billions of dollars on the line.

They are very expensive vehicles to produce.

A price class above what anyone else

has ever made before.

[Spinelli] It's the kind of hubris

that we tend to do as humans

when we want to take something to the ultimate level.

The hypercar is really the ultimate expression

of intellect and ego.

It's where those two things meet.

It's the manifestation of our human instinct

to be superhuman, to have that Iron Man suit, you know.

As a philosopher might say, it's to recreate God on Earth.

But, again, it's also about

an automotive, global sausage fest

between these major manufacturers.

And I don't think there's any question that

part of it is just sheer ego.

So it's brilliant. So you've got Ferrari

waving its bits about and McLaren going,

"I've got a bigger one that you," and then,

you've Porsche saying, "We got two."

[Levi] Some of the biggest players in the sports car world

have bet enormous budgets and their reputations

on building hypercars.

The Porsche 918.

The Ferrari LaFerrari.

The McLaren P1.

These brands are locked in a battle to define

what a hypercar is, and the risk is very real.

After all, hypercars sell not in the tens of thousands

or even thousands, but in the hundreds or less.

[Neil] There is a market or there is a business model

for small, highly technical super sports car manufacturing

that doesn't have to grow beyond 50 cars a year.

You don't have to be GM to succeed in the car business.

You don't have to even be Porsche or Ferrari.

Just amazing looking at these huge stands.

They've spent a fortune on these things for two weeks

and then they tear them down again.

It's just, uh, shocking in a way, I guess.

[Levi] Christian von Koenigsegg's firm

isn't a global multinational corporation.

But the vehicles that bear his name are globally known

for helping define what a hypercar is.

[Neil] Christian Koenigsegg is,

uh, one of the finest people I've ever met,

an intuitive engineer.

Not a trained engineer, but an, a person

whose intuition is incredible.

And in his own quiet way, he is changing the car business.

[Levi] Angelholm, Sweden is like most

northern European beach towns.

It's quiet and cold.

But to sports car fans, Angelholm is synonymous

with Koenigsegg Automotive, a company founded by a man

whose desire to build the world's best sports cars

reaches all the way back to his childhood.

For as far as I can remember,

I've been totally fascinated by cars.

When I was about, yeah, five years old, I went to the,

uh, movies with my father and saw a Norwegian stop motion

animation movie, which, uh, was really fantastically made.

And it's about a bicycle repairman who

built his own car on the Norwegian mountaintop

to race in kind of a Le Mans style race against

the established teams and cars and drivers and, of course, won.

And this is kind of a fairytale story, but it's really made in

a fantastic way and it's still shown in cinemas

in Norway today.

And every Christmas Eve,

they show it on television in Norway.

It's kind of a national icon there.

But I was really intrigued by this movie and said that

looks like a lot of fun creating and building your own car

with a lot of unique inventions and then go compete with it

against the establishment.

So I remember that point very clearly that

I felt I wanted to do what that bicycle repairman was doing.

Yes, build his own car with his little team

and do something fantastic with it.

[Levi] It's a dream shared by many like him who grew up

worshipping the automobile.

But the difference: Christian has done just that.

This is an old picture from

when we built the first prototype.

This was before, uh, the ser-- this car,

and this was in '96.

This is Christian and his co-workers

working on this car.

This was in Olofstrom where Christian started the company,

and stayed there-- he stayed there for two years

preparing the first prototype.

I actually lived in Olofstrom as well

with Christian during this period.

And here's a picture of us back then.

[Koenigsegg] I think it was 12th of Oc-- uh, August, 1994,

I said now I'm going to build the car.

So I--so then I did everything, designing, drawing,

creating some kind of business idea

I planned around it, development plan.

And then I started finding people around me

who could, who could help out.

Found a chassis engineer and I found a designer

who could help me make a model of my sketches.

But it took me two years from the day I decided

to do it to have a full running car prototype.

[Levi] With every new high performance iteration,

Christian von Koenigsegg and his team at Angelholm

keep pushing the hypercar envelope further.

But it's his latest creation that he hopes

will really leave a mark.

It's the Koenigsegg One:1.

The name refers to the perfect power to weight ratio.

Horsepower to kilograms of curb weight.

For every one kilogram the car weighs,

its engine produces one horsepower.

[Koenigsegg] This is the first prototype One:1 car

that we're going to showcase at Geneva Motor Show.

So this is the company test car.

So as all other show cars from Koenigsegg,

they start out as a show car and then they become

our test car and demo car.

[Levi] It will be the first production sports car

with one megawatt of power.

That's 1,341 horsepower

in a car that weighs 1,341 kilograms.

[Koenigsegg] Usually, we spend a lot of energy and time

making our cars elegant.

In this case, as it's going to be a road car

which is also very much focused on racetrack driving,

we let aerodynamics take the upper hand over elegance.

So it's going to look very racy on the normal road,

but very at home at the racetrack.

It might seem obvious, of course, but the entire car

is made out of carbon fiber.

The monocoque, the chassis, the body work,

all the aero features, everything is carbon fiber

on this car, even the wheels.

So as before with our Agera R and the nor--

our more normal cars, we have the most

carbon fiber intense road car on the planet.

And that makes it lighter,

stronger, stiffer than any other car.

[Harris] Carbon fiber is an interesting one because

in so many ways, it is revolutionizing our industry

and it will continue to do so.

But it isn't the answer to all problems.

There's a feeling in the industry at times

that you could solve third world debt with carbon fiber.

You can't.

It's brilliant because it's moldable,

because it's so light and because it's strong

when it's moved in the direction it wants to be moved.

Of course, it's not in the direction it doesn't

want to be moved and that has to be remembered.

In terms of forming the structure of a car,

what we'd call a tub, it's genius.

Almost all parts of a Koenigsegg is made out

of carbon fiber, and we only use the most extreme type of

carbon fiber material available, which is called prepreg.

It's the same that's been used in Formula 1 and

fighter jets and spaceships and things like that.

[Levi] Exotic materials like carbon fiber were once used

solely in the realms of aerospace and motorsport.

But by the 1980s, a new paradigm would emerge

and it would change everything.

[Okulski] In the past, the top of the top was the supercar.

Everything else was a sports car or a super sports car.

[Roy] Supercars were sports cars

incorporating race technology that were street legal.

The F40 was street legal.

[Spinelli] So the F40 was a car

that came together where Ferrari used

all of its racing resources,

where they cared about the aerodynamics.

They put it through the wind tunnel

and they made sure that it had the, you know,

the down force to make it

stable on the road at 200 miles an hour.

You know, the F40 was a really groundbreaking car,

even though it was sort of built on the 288 GTO,

which was the car I had on my wall.

It was like my personal favorite supercar of the time.

The F40 took that platform and just kind of threw it up

the technology ladder and set its racing and road cars

at a level that nobody had seen really before.

The ten years before the F40 came out

were a hugely fertile time for racing technology.

You had giant advances in aerodynamics,

material science had come a really long way.

You had materials like, you know, composites, you know,

carbon fiber, Kevlar, really lightweight materials.

[Levi] In the early '90s,

the Ferrari F40 brought Formula 1 racing technology

to the street.

A decade later, the next wave in hypercars would focus

on absolute power and straight-line speed.

Enter the Bugatti Veyron,

the first series production car to break 250 miles per hour.

[Brungs] I think we created this segment

of hypercars.

We were the very first to develop a car

with a top speed of over 400

and we were the first with a car

with a performance of more than 1,000 horses.

And we were the first to go in a price segment above

a million euros.

The Veyron is the application

of technology against psychology.

If you're able to buy one of these cars,

it's not only your-- it's not your first car.

It's not your second car. It's not your tenth car.

It's probably your 100th car in your collection

and being able to throw down millions of dollars

really means nothing to you.

This was a steep change in the way people

felt about an investment in a car.

And people were used to spending millions on the arts

or spending millions on airplanes.

You know, you have to have a plane situation

to be one of the people that has this car.

You have to be able to ask somebody, one of your friends,

and say, what's your plane situation?

Took some time, but people understood that the substance

of the car is really worth

and justifies the price of over a million.

It is completely unnecessary, but, I mean, our car

is not made for transportation from A to B.

Our car is an A to A car.

It is like you buy beautiful clothes.

It's like you want to go for the best.

What the Veyron does, giving the customer the possibility

of driving in a speed category where he has not been

with his supercars before.

Obviously, left something to desire

for the other manufacturers.

[Brungs] Other players in this arena, they actually

are very thankful to us that we opened this field,

this field of cars of above a price tag of a million.

And for them, this also opens a market

and opens the possibility to build ultra sports cars.

[Levi] The Koenigsegg headquarters occupies

a base once used by the Swedish Air Force.

Runways from which fighter pilots once took to the skies

patrolling Sweden's sovereign perimeter in jets

mainly built by Saab are still across the property.

[Ohlsson] The guys here, they tried to stop the Germans

from flying here, helping their aircrafts from U.S.

and from England.

And this first division, they always start

early in the morning when the mist was still there.

And everybody just heard and stopped.

They heard them land. They couldn't see them.

So they said, "They must be ghosts."

So that's, it's taken up as the division badge.

[Koenigsegg] They came to us with great pride

and showed us their ghost symbol

and asked us, "Would you do us the honor

"to put this on your cars?

"It would be a shame for this to die

"just because we have to shut down.

"And you're doing something very different,

"but it's still kind of extreme, fast-moving,

"fighter jet-like kind of creature

"so we would be very happy

if you would put this on your car."

So we said, with great honor, we accepted their symbol,

and ever since, we've been putting a ghost

on each car we build.

For every car we build in that factory will have a ghost.

If we build cars elsewhere, we will not put the ghost

on the cars because they're not in that premises.

So we're out at the Koenigsegg runway,

which has been very instrumental for us

in the creation of our cars and what we do.

So our factory's actually a former

fighter jet squadron hangar.

And here, we can go 24/7 any day, any time, to test

whatever we want to test with very little planning.

As soon as we come up with an idea

for an engine tweak, an gearbox tweak,

brake pads, brake discs, aerodynamics,

whatever, really, we can just go out and test.

And that's quite unusual even for large car manufacturers

to have that opportunity, and that has really shaped

what we're doing and it's the reason why our cars

can be so extreme as they are, as we, anytime,

can go out and test drastically.

[Levi] While the Koenigsegg team has yet to finish

their first One:1 hypercar, one of the biggest names

in the global automotive market is already in production

with a hypercar of their own.

Porsche's legacy of high performance cars

spans six decades.

But as the first mover in unproven territory,

Porsche is shouldering a big technological risk,

a hybrid electric hypercar.

At a factory in Stuttgart, Germany, Porsche has planned

a run of 918 cars built at a rate of four per day.

In the hypercar market, that quantity is unprecedented.

[Harris] Are these big, risky decisions or not?

When we get to the big car companies,

the proper car companies, the Porsche, McLaren

and the Ferrari, that's different.

The Porsche is the riskiest

because the Porsche is using more complicated technologies.

It's a much more complicated calibration device

and it's coming from a brand that requires

a higher level of finish and development, let's say.

I'm not demeaning the other two, but the Porsche has to meet

all the standards of durability of a Boxster.

There's lots of rich people in the world now,

but to sell 918 when there's another two hypercars,

three hypercars on sale at the same time is a real gamble.

[Levi] 918 cars,

nearly triple what Porsche's closest rivals

have planned to build,

and each one with a price tag of just under $1 million.

And they would go on to sell every single one.

Here at the Formula 1 circuit in Austin, Texas,

Porsche factory driver Patrick Long is behind

the wheel of a 918 Spyder for the first time.

[Long] Yeah, the beauty of this 918 is that you're dealing

with a lot of aerodynamic downforce

so that initial attack on the brake is similar

to the race car, and you're able to do that

with some added help from ABS and hybrid charging.

Um, that generation of electricity

really helps in stopping the car.

The most stunning feature is its packaging density.

It's the same size as a Carrera GT.

It has four-wheel steering, all-wheel drive,

a very elaborate multistage hybrid system

with a crazy battery.

But you can't get a postage stamp under the skin

anywhere because every centi--every millimeter

is filled with something.

[Levi] The man behind the 918 project

is Dr. Frank Walliser, who was able to take the 918

from concept to production car in only four years.

[Harris] Frank Walliser, what a great guy.

Always smiling, under massive pressure in 918,

massive pressure.

You know, Porsche won't thank me for saying it,

but it was a project that wasn't that loved internally.

It caused massive strife. It was expensive.

Did they want to make it? Should it have been a hybrid?

They were under huge pressure,

and Frank marshaled the whole thing brilliantly.

[Walliser] And we really started with the development

in, let me say, October of 2010.

And we had, uh, around 200 people together

starting on the project, working on everything.

We had a highly motivated team that had a clear target.

We want to make the best super sports car of the world.

When I think about the 918, I think it was perhaps

the most technically complicated car that will ever be built.

To get everything in and in a beautiful enveloping shape

that's also air efficient,

that you've got room for the struts, it's insane.

The thing is insane.

Porsche always starts with racing, right?

So Porsche starts with what works on a racetrack.

What can we learn on the racetrack that we can apply

to the road cars and what, in some cases,

do we learn from the road cars

that we can apply to the racetrack?

[Walliser] We could really carry over a lot of technology

from racing now to a street car and definitely will come

from this street car then to other street cars thereon.

And it just makes it-- makes it interesting and--

and, yeah, important for us.

It's--it's an important car for Porsche.

But what's happened is as they developed

these hybrid packages,

they found so much more performance from them.

And they found a way of augmenting torque,

of creating a new way of building performance cars.

And I think the discovery process has been enlightening.

You know, watching Frank Walliser of Porsche

go through his battles visually as I met him over

the three-year period, you know, he started out going,

what do I do with this electricity?

And then, at the very end, he's confidently saying,

this car is faster around a track because it's a hybrid.

Okay, competition is always nice.

Uh, it shows you it's the best what we can get.

You know who's best and it's objective.

And I think with our car, with the layout of the car,

considering the fuel consumption,

the performance in day to day usability,

it's definitely the best package.

[Harris] The P1 just feels like it was just

plunked on here from another planet to me, and I love that.

I just stood behind it at night with light

shining in the back of it.

It's just completely porous and it's tiny

and it's small, and I think so much of that appeals.

I think you need to see the effect this has

on a crowd of tourists as they come out of the Yasmarina Hotel

to understand how important the motorcar is in our lives.

And this is the ultimate expression of a motorcar.

And even if you don't like cars or are not interested in them,

when you see that shape, you're drawn to it.

These are magnetic objects that, alongside things

like space shuttles and very fast fighter jets,

represent the ultimate expression of what human beings

can do with the materials that we drag out of the ground.

[man] We, obviously, add the power and torque

from the electric motor to give it additional,

you know, head-on performance.

But where the car is totally transformed

is by using the hybrid power,

the electric motor power to torque fill.

The only thing that comes close is a Formula 1 car.

[ tires squealing ]

[Levi] McLaren developed the P1 at its cutting edge

technology center in southeast England.

Designed by world famous architect Norman Foster,

the MTC is home to McLaren's Formula 1 team,

which is based just a few steps away from where

McLaren's road cars are designed and built.

Company boss, Ron Dennis, is said to have

a particular eye for detail.

And so McLaren cars reflect the sensibility of the place

in which they're built.

[Mackenzie] This production line is the P1 production line,

and at the moment, we're building the P1 production cars,

the 375 cars, and also the P1 GTRs.

So we're making a track variant of the car for customers to--

to play to their heart's content on the circuit.

It really is about the, um, the best technology.

Our target for the P1 is to produce the best drivers' car,

the best technology that was available on the day.

The McLaren P1 is a savage automobile.

Uh, it has the brightest response

of any of the three cars.

It has the most, even though LaFerrari

doesn't have a seat and you're sitting in the tub,

the P1 is, I would say probably has

the quickest reaction time, but it's mostly just light.

It feels like a titanium foil or something.

I mean, it's just an amazing car.

So P1 is about ultimate performance,

ultimate drivability, ultimate driver engagement.

Obviously, the price tag is high.

That enables you to really work with technology

and put that new technology into these vehicles.

The fact you have two driver modes in the P1,

the fact you have a comfort mode for road driving,

with the press of a button, the car lowers by 50 millimeters.

The aerodynamics, the wing raises by 300 millimeters,

and there you get a car focused for the track.

We were sold out before a customer

had actually driven the car.

Independently, three OEMs decided performance hybrids

were the right thing to do in the ultimate segment

in this time period, which is quite incredible.

I actually think each car is better

because the other people were doing the same thing.

This current batch of ultimate segment cars

has been a great point in history. Yeah.

I think the three manufacturers coming out together,

presenting these cars, it's great.

The question is: when are we gonna get

that next step?

And it's probably gonna be eight to ten years time.

It's gonna be when we get that next batch

of hypercars coming out.

The question is: what is the technology?

What is going to be the differentiator

for those batch of cars?

One thing about hypercars is it's not only

about the cars and the technology.

And we can nerd out on them all we want, but it's really

about the performance that people want to know about.

Which one is faster than the other?

The Nurburgring is basically the whole history of motorsports

on one single road.

I mean, it was built in the '20s in the Eifel Mountains.

It's the most demanding racetrack in the world.

It's 22 kilometers, 144 corners.

It's the ultimate test of any car, really.

I mean, because it tests every part of the car.

[Roy] Nurburgring is the only constant

context of measurement capability

of cars in the history of the automobile.

It's the only place that manufacturers

have gone consistently over time to test vehicles.

The Nurburgring is, of course, an amazing track in Germany

in that it--amazing in that it's long

and it has an incredibly storied history.

But it's become much more than that.

It almost has become the soul of the auto enthusiast.

It is one of the last tracks

that's truly dangerous that we still see commonly used.

The curbs are really high and you have to know which curbs

you can hit and which you can't.

It's going to unsettle the car very quickly.

The tarmac is rougher in some sections than the others,

so you want to have a suspension that is loose enough

to take that, but stiff enough to keep the body,

you know, really level.

There's sections of the track where you might

have rain and another section where it's sunny and warm.

All of these things come together to make a single lap

in the Nurburgring almost a race in and of itself.

Some of it's video games.

Some of it is a self-fulfilling prophecy

where certain manufacturers had success there

and were touting the number and then more would

and more would and it became the benchmark.

You know, they say Nurburgring tested,

and you see the cars being tested there

because there are people with video cameras just sort of

hanging around the track on industry days.

But what's happening now is that, you know,

people really, really want to know which

of the hypercars is fastest.

You have four cars that are all competing with each other,

with the LaFerrari, the P1, the 918 and now the One:1.

Everyone wants to say that their solution

is the fastest thing around there, and right now,

the 918's the only one that's published a time.

[Spinelli] So right now, we know that Porsche is

about at seven minutes,

right, so that's the time to beat.

No hypercar maker wants to be slower

than seven minutes at this point.

You know, McLaren's out there now

and they haven't given a lap time yet.

And everybody in the world is waiting for McLaren to, like,

you know, say whether or not they beat Porsche.

I mean, it's really created so much drama in the car world.

[Levi] But while the enthusiasts and automotive press

are waiting for McLaren's lap time,

Christian von Koenigsegg is back in Sweden

working to get the first One:1 finished.

Even though the car's not done yet,

its purpose is to be the fastest car ever made.

And that means it must tackle the Nurburgring

with an official lap time.

Nurburgring is definitely on the agenda, so that's coming,

I think, sometime, uh, midsummer, end of summer,

we'll get into that seriously.

[man] And do you actually start testing in the summer there?

Uh, that's the plan, yes, to start tests

-in the summer in Nurburgring. -Cool.

Do you want to say anything about lap times now or anything?

-No. -[ laughs ]

I have no idea.

Nurburgring is definitely a very interesting track

to test at and, uh,

I don't see why we shouldn't be the fastest.

We should be the fastest.

That's what our calculations tell us.

-Cool. -So we'll see.

[Serkwanski] And when Christian first came up

with the idea, it was just, you know, we just--

okay, let's do it.

Yeah, and now we're standing here and the car is,

uh, yeah, it's getting ready, so it's gonna be great.

We have a lot of testing to do.

They're gonna be thousands of kilometers on tracks,

finding the perfect setting.

I mean, the idea is, of course, we wouldn't be here

if we would've been aiming for second position.

Then we could have gone home many years ago.

So, of course, we're aiming to be the quickest

around the Nurburgring for street legal production cars.

And, uh, I mean, even if you haven't been there

with the Agera R, we are very confident that even that car

will set a very good lap time.

And even though this is a limited edition,

it's still a production car, and that will be even quicker.

These hypercars are amazingly engineered.

They're breaking new ground.

They're trying new things.

It's experimentation. It's engineering.

It's--it's computer modeling.

All of those things go into just shaving a hair--

a hair's bit of time off of that Nurburgring record

or off of that zero to 60 time.

[Levi] For over a decade, Dan Greenawalt has been

on a mission to take the cars that only a few thousand people

in the world own and make them accessible

to the masses via video game consoles like Microsoft Xbox.

[Greenawalt] So this is actually a laser scan.

There's millions of points of data in here.

Even though it looks like it was modeled,

this is actually just a laser scan.

[Levi] He's the creative director of Turn 10 Studios,

the maker of Forza Motorsport.

And in their small offices outside Seattle, Washington,

the team is working to accurately replicate

and simulate the driving performance characteristics

of these hypercars.

[Greenawalt] We've really been trying to establish a vision

for car culture and gaming culture

and be on the vanguard of what those two things mean

and what they're going to be in the future.

So new media, which is video games and Facebook

and Twitter and everything else,

has really changed how car culture works.

And some people lament it.

You know, the magazines are kind of going away,

but new things have emerged.

There's a lot of things that have come up

that are filling the void.

But what's really speaking to a group of players

or a group of car enthusiasts

that are becoming car enthusiasts?

What makes them into car enthusiasts?

Is it racing?

It's hard to watch racing.

It's hard to even get it in the United States.

But I see it as the responsibility of games

like ours, a franchise like ours,

to get a younger generation into cars,

to replenish our ranks as enthusiasts.

There's a hand-in-hand relationship there

that I think video games are taking the spot of a lot

of the magazines.

Where what was on the cover of the magazine,

what's on the cover of the video game?

What was the highlight story? What's the highlight race?

Now, you're getting to interact.

You're getting to experience it.

But moreover, today's generation,

you're getting to create your own media out of it.

You get to be your own magazine.

You can paint the car. You can put videos on Twitch.

You can have people watching your--your--

subscribing to your channel on YouTube.

It becomes an ecosystem where the group fuels itself,

and that's why I'm not too pessimistic about the future

of automotive when it comes to the next generation.

And as a result, the car companies have fundamentally

changed their relationship to video games.

They now see us as an essential way

of communicating to a younger customer.

They've empowered us to actually stoke passion

in a new generation.

[Levi] The Geneva show is less than two weeks away.

Christian and his team at Koenigsegg are pulling

another all-nighter to get the One:1 show car ready

in time for its very first public appearance.

No one but the team has ever laid eyes on it.

It has to be perfect.

[Berglund] The sub-assemblies, we have front

and rear bumper.

That's the sub-assemblies and polishing area.

The roof is--as well, has had polishing.

It's been done over there.

Yeah, of course. And in some--some...

-Interior... -Yeah.

Interior is, uh, in sub-assembly as well.

But, uh, some panels are starting to come out now,

and, uh, we are finishing the electrics tomorrow.

And after that, we can put in the interior.

We were running a little bit late.

We started a little bit late with this car,

so we have to push really hard now in the end

to actually get the car done.

This is, for me, the most, uh, hard one.

I've been working really hard with this new car here.

And this is even harder than when

we showed off the Agera first time.

[Koenigsegg] One week to go with

three weeks work to do, so people just stay here working,

sleeping a few hours at home

or coming and going or just pulling 24-hour shifts.

So it's--it's really super dedicated people that brings

all their energy and love into this to get it done.

Geneva is, for us, the most important event every year.

It's the most international, prestigious car show

on the planet from my perspective.

It's a small show, but, in the size,

it's somehow small, but everyone is there.

If you're not there, you know, not in the industry.

[Koenigsegg] Like, one or two days earlier,

it looks like this is never going to happen,

but we're really used to that

because it's the same every year when we do, uh,

a new project for Geneva.

It just--everything kind of just comes together

at the last point in time.

And it's happening today again and it looks really great,

and I'm--I think everyone is feeling good about it.

It's just working out well.

[Berglund] He's the guy that thinks

that nothing is impossible,

and that's, uh, how he is working.

It's the same as working here as working for Christian.

It's not for everyone.

Uh, he puts a lot of pressure.

Uh, not pressure in a bad way,

but pressure as in he has high expectations

with the people he works with.

Uh, of course, because the product needs to

meet a very high standard.

The--that spirit goes into the people who works here and

into me, and it's really fun because he's always motivating.

[ speaking Swedish ]

I think we chose...

I think we chose this perfect shape here

exactly what it has to be because we get flush there

and then...

[Berglund] And, uh, people may not always think that way

or not just a toy or a thing you buy,

actually buy a story, a dream that we try to create.

[Koenigsegg] But that's just so emotional

and the car looks just--

I just want to get in and drive it.

That's all I can say.

It just gives this fantastic feedback and it--

it's ready to go kind of thing.

I know what's gone into it. I know it's so for real.

Um, it's just going to--

just going to shine. That's all I can say.

[ engine starts ]

If you have the power to influence your own work,

that is very motivating to people.

And I think that's what happens here.

Breaking new grounds and doing the impossible

all the time and, uh,

that's because he truly believes they can do it.

And then, when someone believes in you, you can do it.

[Levi] All roads to the hypercar lead here,

to this glittering center of global wealth

on the western shore of Lake Geneva, a city of royals

and celebrities and the very, very rich.

It's here the auto industry puts on its most

exotic face every year.

It's where Italian design houses parade

their automotive haute couture.

[Harris] The Geneva Motor Show is the one motor show

that you have to go to.

Uh, it is compact and small,

and anything that's relevant is there.

And car manufacturers will delay the launch of a car

often to make it happen at Geneva.

[Levi] The Geneva Motor Show is where you go if you want

to find the auto industry's most exciting,

most outrageous and rarest of birds.

How are you?

I'm in the house.

-Good to see you again. -Oh, yeah.

-Are you running? -Yeah.

[Koenigsegg] It's a very interesting place here

because it's, uh,

everyone kind of lowers their guard, in a sense.

I mean, they're showing off their product like we are doing,

but there's also an opportunity to meet up and talk in a--

in a fairly casual way.

And, uh, it's more of an even-playing field.

I mean, we're a tiny, tiny manufacturer from Sweden,

but we'll get to talk to the big boys and the execs

at the big companies, and they treat us with respect,

which is really nice for us.

And I guess they think we're kind of an interesting flair

at a place like this as well.

So a lot of interesting stuff is going on here,

apart from showing off cars.

There's also mingling and meeting contacts and so on.

I'd like to congratulate you, doing the One:1.

-Oh. -It's just a fantastic car.

-Thank you so much. -Brilliant. Well done.

So let's see.

There, they have the super charger.

Have a quick look.

I really like Tesla. I have a Model S.

It's, uh, definitely one of my favorite cars.

Uh, they've done a fantastic job, but, uh, kind of

just pushing forward the EV awareness

and the technology and what you get for your money.

I mean, even though they're expensive,

they're a great value for money.

No one is even close to supplying

what they're supplying presently.

Actually, we can stop just quickly here.

So it's kind of like a door, but it's not a door.

It's just panel.

This is just insane.

A Ferrari V8 trike or something.

And you have these intake tracks in your face.

Imagine the sound of that.

Oh, did you see that cool thing down at Porsche,

this concrete thing with all the model cars?

-No. -You need to shoot that.

That's super cool.

This thing caught my eye. I really like this thing.

I wanted one in my living room.

It's so cool.

All these model cars casted into this concrete block.

Just something about it.

I don't know exactly what it is, but...

[Levi] The Geneva show is a triumphant moment

for Christian von Koenigsegg and the One:1.

And there's something else to celebrate as well.

Koenigsegg's entire run of cars has already sold out,

sight unseen.

The enthusiasm amongst the world's hypercar buyers

bolsters Christian's optimism for the car and for his company.

A strong showing at the Nurburgring later

in the year will only add to the One:1 mystique,

but only a few feet away, a longstanding rival looms large.

It's multimillion dollar display booth projects

one of the world's most powerful brands.

A name that has always been synonymous

with the highest caliber of sports car:

Ferrari.

[Neil] LaFerrari is about holistic driver experience.

Not about zero to 60, although it crushes.

Not about top speed, although it's 217.

Uh, not about cornering, although it pulls

a staggeringly casual 2Gs.

[Harris] The roads around Maranello were not great.

There really are very few good roads.

There's that one Ponte Samone road that we've used for years

and I think I've driven every single corner sideways

and I've probably nearly crashed on every single corner.

So we drove the LaFerrari there and after about

quarter of an hour, it was clearly apparent

that that was not the canvas on which you could

paint any of the performance.

It was just too much to really enjoy yourself.

[Neil] You have a great company with a great history

and about 8,000 of the smartest people in Italy

working at the campus there at Ferrari.

And only the best and the best of them got to--

promoted to LaFerrari.

There's a mixture of emotions when you come

to a place like Maranello because we have heritage.

In fact, we have unparalleled heritage.

This is the home of fast cars.

It's the home of the supercar. It's the home of the hypercar.

This is supercar valley, so within a 20 mile radius,

we have Pagani, we have Lamborghini, we have--

we used to have Bugatti and many others that have tried

and failed to compete with the red one,

which remains the daddy of them all.

So we have history and heritage,

but also we have this very forward-looking sense

that they're trying to take a type of motoring that perhaps

is unacceptable to people, that perhaps need to change and

they're making new technologies to take that forward.

[Neil] What comes out of Ferrari is so technically refined

and reified, you know, so cost unconstrained that

when you put it all together as they have,

it's just a superb driving experience

and there's a real--as I say, it's a real honor.

It's like being--my job is like being the art critic

in Florence, you know, in the 15th century

'cause everybody is fucking great, right?

You know, everybody's a--everybody's a genius and,

uh, I mean, there's no shit anywhere, right?

-Every car is great. -[man] Awesome.

Now you should ask me about the Pagani.

[Harris] If you had to imagine in your mind

the autocratic charismatic creator

of probably the most impressive hypercar brand

to emerge on its own in the last 30 years,

you couldn't actually make up Horacio Pagani.

He is--he's perfect.

You know, he made his bones in, I think,

military supply and then bikes.

Really, you know, frankly, he didn't even

study carbon composites that long.

I mean, he had a ten month internship

at Lamborghini ages ago, but the guy's self taught.

Total autodidact.

A guy who doesn't do e-mail, doesn't do CAD drawings,

doesn't speak English,

which is the universal language of engineering.

He's the Italian Argentinean who says

he doesn't speak English, but understands everything you say

and can speak English perfectly but chooses not to.

I love that.

There's a creative energy to him that comes out in his car

when you--especially when you go all the way to the Huayra.

Isn't he a mystery? Isn't he an enigmatic figure?

He's the living, breathing expression of his cars.

He's tangible and I love that.

He is the ultimate hypercar owner--business owner.

You know, he's the man.

[Greenawalt] There's this yin and yang.

There's this push and pull between

engineering and artistry.

And I think when you look at Koenigsegg and--and Pagani,

you've got a bit of a opposite in some ways

that Pagani is really this artistry at its finest

and Koenigsegg's really engineering focused.

[Levi] Back in Sweden, it's business as usual.

The Koenigsegg team is on the runway testing cars

for customer delivery.

After two years of development, the One:1 is finally

ready to stretch its legs.

[Koenigsegg] Well, right now, we have five of our One:1s

in the same room, so they're kind of going out

a little bit at once.

We've been building them parallel to our testing program

where we've had our test car running for almost a year now.

And we're just at the finalization stages of that,

so we've already delivered one to the customer,

and the other ones are ready to go out the door.

So it's an exciting moment.

I hope we don't see as many of them here at the same time

ever again because it's getting crowded, so.

September 2014, Koenigsegg goes out to the Nurburgring

and they're testing a lot of the components that are going

into the One:1, they've put into an Agera test car.

We were there for almost three weeks

and did a lot of miles and, uh, got up to good speed.

And things go wrong.

Things can go wrong.

One corner just, you know, messed up can cause tragedy,

and that's kind of what happened with Koenigsegg.

Yeah, we went off the track at relatively high speed,

but everyone was okay.

A little bit shooken up.

The car was a little bit damaged.

Uh, but we checked the car afterwards,

technically looked all fine.

Uh, our test driver said, yeah, it was--could've been--

honestly it could've been something--the track,

as--as a whole, felt slipperier.

Well, we don't know for sure exactly what happened,

uh, from the incident.

I mean, the actual thing that caused it,

uh, because, yeah, on the, uh, on the industry board,

you have limited, you know, you can't video

-as much and all that. -[man] Yeah.

Uh, but--so there are a few different things

that could have been the cause.

Uh, but we focus on the new, uh, new challenge.

So, uh, so we'll see.

You know, there is pressure to do this.

I mean, these guys are under pressure to get that lap time

and not only to test the car and to test the components of it,

but to get the lap time, to make a good showing out there.

We're very keen to get back on the ring with this car because,

uh, when the weather gets better, we're gonna be there,

really, to see what the car can do, uh, officially.

[Levi] But another tragedy will soon make Christian rethink

his ambition to break a Nurburgring record.

I often feel there's something to the danger of driving

that defines a lot of things.

I think some of the Nurburgring is that it's really dangerous.

It's not like other tracks.

And we still have, you know, Le Mans.

There's--there's still deaths occasionally there.

And other FIA tracks.

But the Nurburgring is dangerous on a level

that you just don't see popularized

or publicized quite as much.

[Levi] March of 2015,

a fatal crash during a race at the Nurburgring.

The death seems to be a final straw for officials,

ushering a series of unprecedented

restrictions at the track.

[Koenigsegg] When we started getting info like, uh, yesterday

or the day before, that, uh, there are, uh,

speed restrictions on the-- on this area

called the Flugplatz where this, uh,

I don't know if you saw this some GPR

crashed out in the audience a couple of months ago

in a--in the--in a GT race.

So--so they're restricting that area

to 250 kilometers per hour, and we knew that for a while,

but that--that's not a big issue.

We--we can live with that.

And then, there is another area called Schwedenkreuz

or something which is restricted to 200, 215.

We could also live with that.

But then, we started hearing that, uh, long straight

is restricted to 250 kilometers per hour and that's where

we can go 400 kilometers per hour.

So that--that--that's a big restriction for us, uh,

but we said okay, maybe we can get around that

or we'll see how fast we can go.

And then, they said, we're-- they're not--no one

is allowed to go for all-out records anymore this year.

So, uh, all of those things together kind of

put a lid on it today.

So we're kind of scrambling to get everything out

and get ready and now they said, hang on, hang on.

What are we doing here?

If we're not allowed to, what--what are we doing?

So, um, yeah, so that's where we are, basically, suddenly.

[Levi] For the One:1, the ban on hot laps at the Nurburgring

now makes an attempt at a lap record impossible.

[Koenigsegg] We've--we've already kind of

done a record at Suzuka,

and we have to keep on going and taking record

at all the other tracks we're allowed to take records at.

[Levi] Disappointed, but still confident,

Koenigsegg sets his sights elsewhere.

[Koenigsegg] We can try to go back to Spa again.

I mean, we didn't even try to go for a record there.

We can drive probably four or five seconds faster

than what we did already.

[Serwanski] I have a very close relationship with Christian,

and he knows that I make the decision

what's safe to do or not.

So he's just gonna be--

do whatever you feel comfortable with.

Go as quick as you can, of course, but he knows that

I do the balancing between pushing boundaries

and not putting cars at risk.

Because anyone can go out and be super quick,

but what's the risk?

You can take, you know, world champion of something,

say, go, go and do, you know, a lap record.

And he might make it and he'll probably be quicker

than I am, but he maybe will not make that at all.

And the question is: is it worth it if you make it? Yes.

Is it worth it if you don't make it? No.

[Levi] Spa-Francochamps, an hour west of the Nurburgring,

a racetrack built in the same motorsports era.

Spa is smaller than the Nurburgring,

but it challenges drivers with high speeds and blind corners.

[Serwanski] It's been a long process and, I mean,

it's--we're never done because, as Christian says,

perfection is a moving target.

So there will always be new things.

I will always figure out something new,

the suspension or the air or something.

So there's not really a goal for it.

We just want to make it as good as possible

in the given timeframe.

[Levi] If the Koenigsegg One:1 were to set a lap record at Spa,

it would truly be in a class by itself.

But Spa has its own dangers

and its own rules and regulations.

[man] Uh, just went red.

[man over radio] Fuck.

There was a red flag in every corner.

And I'm also standing halfway out on the track

waving yellow and red flags, so.

Okay, well, we'll-- we have to check what is--

what is the problem.

What was going on at the end there?

Yeah, they put marshals in the middle of the track.

Yeah, and there was red flags all over the track.

In every single post, there was a red flag

and there were red lights.

By the time I got to the end of the straight first time,

the whole track lit up for red.

And they had marshals physically on the track

to prevent me from going.

[Koenigsegg] I mean, what--what we're doing with hypercars

or now megacars or call them whatever you like, uh,

I always ask myself, what am I doing for humanity?

I mean, how is--how are these, let's say, "luxury,"

super expensive sporting goods

or whatever they are, how do they influence,

uh, everyday lives of humankind in a broader sense?

And--and I think it does, actually.

Uh, well, number one thing is, of course, uh, everyone thinks

I'm living my dream, which I agree,

and I think that is important thing

to show that it is possible,

that it's important to dream and to realize your dream

that--that really works.

That is one very important part of it.

But also, the technology we develop, uh, we've seen

many things already trickle down into more normal cars.

Combustion engine philosophies,

how--how it interacts with the transmission

and the clutch and all of these things

that are really on the edge in our industry,

is trickling down to more normal cars.

It's like a, yeah, the Bugatti Veyron had

one of the first dual clutch transmissions.

Now you're finding it in kind of the--any--every Volkswagen

around the world, more or less.

So, uh, that is just happening and it's one of

the few industries where that's going quite quickly

from high end to low end.

Christian is an inventor, I would say.

Uh, that's his passion.

That's what he lives and breathes, to invent new things.

And at the moment, he's focused on race cars.

Uh, but it could well be anything.

[Spinelli] Hypercars are built by people where there's

a sort of cult of personality around that person.

I mean, whether it's Enzo Ferrari

built the Ferraris.

Ferruccio Lamborghini wanted to best Ferrari, right?

He--he--there was a rivalry.

Um, guys like Horacio Pagani and, uh,

Christian von Koenigsegg come along

and they put their names on the cars for a reason,

because they're personal, but it--this is where the ego part

kind of comes in where it's--they want to

bend the world to their will to create something

that is just a--not only the highest expression

that they can come up with, but the coolest thing

that they've probably ever dreamed of.

And that they can actually put it together and--

and fabricate it, you know, is kind of an amazing thing

for a car guy or just for a kid who grew up

wishing that they could do that.

I get the feeling that Christian's that guy.

I think he knows what he wants.

He wants to experiment with technologies.

He wants to display what he can do and he wants

to then sell it to people

and he wants to go really, really fast.

In the end, having a bloke who wants to go

really, really fast is a fantastic basis

for making a hypercar company.

[Levi] So what is a hypercar?

If we believe those who build, buy and obsess over them,

a hypercar is, in automotive form,

a vision for the future today.

So what is the future for the hypercar?

Like others, Christian von Koenigsegg

is betting on electric propulsion.

His next hypercar will be called the Regara,

and he'll push technology and horsepower even further

using both an internal combustion engine

and an electric motor.

[Harris] Where is it going?

We're moving away from fossil fuels inevitably.

BP, a couple of weeks ago, went out and said it reckoned

there was 58 years of oil left in the ground.

So, okay, I don't believe in peak oil theory,

but, you know, we are reaching a point where extracting

it's costing too much.

We have to change.

Human beings, the human race has always responded

to times of profound change.

That's when we do things.

We--if you tell us we ought to do something to mitigate

against a risk in the future,

and we'll be lazy and we won't do anything.

But if you tell us we have to change, then we will.

That's why at times of world war and conflict,

we tend to invent things much faster

and build things much faster because we have to do things.

We have to respond.

So I think this gradual process is okay,

but I think it will ramp up fairly soon.

Once--once the oil becomes too expensive to get

out of the ground, then you're going to see

the electrification of the motor car.

It's inevitable.

[Greenawalt] Engineers are smart.

We're gonna keep figuring out ways to make cars go faster.

My body can't take a lot of the stuff that these cars

can do now, and at some point,

Lewis Hamilton's body is not going to be able to take

the stuff that these cars can do.

That's the place we're heading to,

and I think it's exactly that idea that kind of comes

into our head that what--it's what makes

hypercars so fascinating.

A car can't do that. It can't do that.

And then, it does.

So the--so the hypercar is the most, you know,

important manifestation of this democratizing force.

The--it's the mani--it's the ultimate manifestation

of freedom, technology and art.

It is the apex of all these ideas in one statement

of what is possible, however irrelevant

that item--that thing is.

It is--it's meaning transcends its irrelevance.

It's about being something that you're not.

And what you're not is a, you know, 250-mile-an-hour beast

that can kind of storm across a landscape

and do superhuman things.

[Levi] And that leaves only one question.

Will humanity's desire for speed endure?

Is it just an anomaly of human evolution,

temporary, a fad?

Or is it our desire for speed that makes us human?

If someone who didn't know anything about cars

asks me why hypercars matter, the only possible answer

is, like jazz, if you have to ask...

*