This Is Koenigsegg's Le Mans Race Car That Was Banned Before It Ever Raced
Screenshot: Top Gear on YouTube
Koenigsegg was still a fairly new company with just 30 employees when it built the CCGT. Based on the Competition Coupe CC8S, which had been launched as the company’s first road-legal offering in 2002, the CCGT was intended to go GT1 racing. From the beginning, the road car was designed to GT1 regulations, including the vehicle width and cockpit frontal area. The homologation rules required at least twenty road cars, and with Koenigsegg’s hand-built philosophy that took a handful of years, so by the time they finished building the CCGT in 2007 and tested it for racing, the class was effectively dismantled.
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The one-off CCGT racing project was shelved at that point, and sold off to private collectors. A recent resurfacing of the car in the hands of an American collector has reinvigorated enthusiasm in the car and its history. The new owner wants to run the car as a historic racing car, and in spite of it never racing in-period, throwback historic racing events are more than happy to allow it on their grids. The folks at Top Gear meet with company brain man and namesake Christian Von Koenigsegg in the unmistakable garages of Sonoma Raceway to go over the machine with a fine-toothed comb.
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Unfortunately the video doesn’t include any clips of the car running or taking to the track, but it’s a very cool insight into a car that has largely been forgotten to time.
Imagine if Koenigsegg had gotten all of its ducks in a row to race the CCGT prior to the GT1 class shutting down. I argue that winning Le Mans in 1970 was the thing that put Porsche on its path to the company it is today. Maybe if Koenigsegg had dedicated itself to motorsport and victory at Le Mans, it would be an entirely different company today. Then again, perhaps the expense of on-track action would have pushed the company out of business and we would have forgotten about it.
