All Entries Tagged With: "Koenigsegg"
Saab, Koenigsegg & The Seventh Seal
- Koenigsegg fallout with Saab echoes Bergman drama
- Christian Koenigsegg literally looks like Death
- Saab may be out of options
By Gunnar Heinrich | IMG The Seventh Seal
HAVE yet to sit through Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.
The last time yours watched it – or attempted – I drifted off somewhere shortly after opening credits. There’s something about the warm patina of fuzzy nat sound coupled with grainy black and white footage that envelops you in a comfy sensory blanket.
In the same vein, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is especially cozy.
Back to the Seventh Seal and how it wraps nicely with Saab’s current grappling with the unknown.
The film’s synopsis is simple: a crusading knight (Max von Sydow) returns home to Sweden to find his country plague ridden and Death, himself, waiting. In a coup, the crusader challenges Death (Bengt Ekerot) to a game of chess in a ploy to delay the inevitable for himself and his family.
The irony in this cross platform fiction-reality-film-auto metaphor is first apparent in that Christian Koenigsegg, president of Koenigsegg Automotive AB and main arbiter of Saab’s fate, looks a lot like Mr. Ekerot’s Death. They’re both completely bald, googley eyed, sinister and eerily indifferent to their partner’s fate.
Darker still, the sixth month round-robin between General Motors, Saab, Koenigsegg, and the Swedish Government seem to parallel the crusader’s fateful chess match.
Having briefly interviewed Saab chief Jan Ake Jonsson two years ago, the dry Swedish executive seems anything but the heroic protagonist. Nevertheless, in this case Mr. Jonsson is Mr. Sydow’s knight in the corporate drama.
Mr. Jonsson and his team deserve credit for working overtime to secure the four way negotiations; plying leverage with Saab’s creditors before Swedish bankruptcy courts, participation from Motown execs, and support from the interior ministry to make the improbable, but nonetheless appealing, Koenigsegg sale happen.
Christian Koenigsegg has announced that despite a half year’s negotiations, legal wrangling, and painstaking planning, his eponymous sports car company will not buy iconic Saab.
Barring an eleventh hour savior, without Koenigsegg Automotive it now seems Saab is out of options.
The Seventh Seal concludes when it’s clear that the knight’s lost the match to Death. Out of options and fearful for his wife and child, he appeals to God: “Have mercy on us, because we are small and frightened and ignorant.”
Happy News? Saab & Koenigsegg
Koenigsegg CCX and Saab Aero X from 2006.
Gunnar Heinrich | IMG via SaabHistory.com
NOW this is a tantalizing shot.
Symbolically and literally. Symbolically in the obvious – or if you’re distracted like me – not so obvious sense that now that Koenigsegg GroupAB and Saab Automobile AB are now about to enter into a marital union of sorts.
Literally in the sense that few square meters of tarmac are so seldom graced by such rare and exciting exotics at in a given moment.
And that’s what’s really cool about this frame: Saab has proven that it can conceptualize an exotic to match – or – even exceed the Koenigsegg, one of the world’s premiere super cars. Now we shall see if Koenigsegg can muster enough financial torque to engineer a turn around for a mass-market line of creatively executed cars.
We’ve seen small car companies manage or cajole bigger ones into action before. Briefly, Ferrari’s leadership over Fiat post-Agnelli. And then there’s the ongoing struggle – or familial tiff – between Porsche and the VW Group. Few doubt that if Porsche had the cash and governmental permission, the Stuttgart’s sports car maker could run VW.
Since Saab already has the production capacity, what’s left for Koenigsegg besides infusing much needed kronor is to ensure that product development stays as suavely slick as Bang & Olufsen sound system. It wouldn’t hurt that some Saab dealers Stateside also feature the odd Koenigsegg CCXR on the showroom floor, either.
Somehow, just by association, Saab seems hotter already.
120…220…250…When 300?
By Gunnar Heinrich
FORCE. Sheer. Force.
Nothing halts a car from progress quite like the aerodynamic and gravitational anchors of Mother Nature.
And to consider that in one century, what seemed like supercar speed for one car – the Jaguar XK120’s 120 mph top speed – managed to amount to a standard rate of progress for the Jaguar XJ220’s 213 mph some forty years later.
The 9FF GT9 (pictured) a modified Porsche 911 that eclipsed the world’s fastest supercar – the Bugatti Veyron’s 253 mph record – is one of nine high flying exotics that grace a special edition of CAR magazine called, appropriately enough, “Supercars.”
The 9FF GT9, along with Koenigsegg’s CCXR boast 254 and 258 mph, respectively. The next car down after the Bugatti is the 219 mph Pagani Zonda Cinque. Which gives us some perspective.
There’s now a laundry list of car companies big and small that are producing 200+ mph machines. From the luxurious Bentley Continental GT to the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1.
This begs the question, how much longer ’til 300 is the standard for extreme performance?
