Exclusive: Koenigsegg, Bugatti, Rimac and Singer bosses drive each other's cars

Because of pesky inconveniences like the occasional bankruptcy, mutual loathing and being literally dead, history has not recorded what Ettore Bugatti reckoned to a LaFerrari, if Enzo would’ve rated an Aventador SVJ, or if Ferrucio Lamborghini wouldn’t have bothered creating a Prancing Horse rival if he’d had a bash at launch control in a Chiron Super Sport.

But here at the inaugural Top Gear Test Track Big Boss Level Hypercar Track Day, we are about to find out what the brains behind the modern world’s most extreme performance cars think to each other’s homework. Don’t ask us about the insurance bill. Just don’t.

Joining us on Stig’s patch we have Christian von Koenigsegg, founder of the record-breaking, patent collecting Swedish hypercar outpost based on an old fighter jet base. From Croatia – grinning after his 2,078bhp Nevera R pinched all of Koenigsegg’s acceleration benchmarks a week earlier - it’s Mate Rimac. (Koenigsegg has since raised the bar again...).

Photography: Tom Barnes & Mark Riccioni

Mate has also brought along a Bugatti Mistral (the world’s fastest convertible) because he’s greedily in charge of two hypercar companies... at 37 years of age. And originally from Norwich but understandably now a Californian, we’re joined by rockstar turned Porsche 911 reimaginer Rob Dickinson. His Singers don’t have the outright punch of the megawatt brandishing wedges, but Mate’s got a Singer Turbo on order and Christian’s presenting his very own take on the rose tinted restomod scene – the CC850, a state of the art Koenigsegg with the look of the original CC8S. And a manual gearbox that’s also an auto.

With seven clutches. And 1,385bhp. Rob’s influence on the high end car world in the past decade cannot be understated. Arguably Singer’s magnum opus – the Williams fettled DLS – is here representing lightness and the joy of analogue.

Rules? Each CEO rides shotgun for as many laps as their stomach can take, to talk their rivals through their respective car’s modes, foibles and superpowers. We roll the cameras, lock the lawyers in a cupboard and stand well back.

Koenigsegg CC850

Mate is first into the Koenigsegg and immediately running his fingers over the roof stitching. “Give me a second to observe the details – this is beautiful,” he grins as Christian prods at the touchscreen to set up the drive. “How much traction control do you want?” “It’s pretty dry – somewhere in the middle?” Mate suggests. “And then the lift off oversteer setting somewhere around there?” Mate fights the urge to look alarmed as CvK explains how the differential can adjust to provoke a more tail happy corner entry.

Mate immediately gets stuck into the CC850’s world first gearbox, a 90kg box of tricks with nine speeds and multiple ratio combos depending on the driving mode. It’s fully automatic – but the driver can manually override it with the six speed H-pattern lever which augments a traditional stick shift using sensors and even a ‘fake’ clutch pedal.

“We should put [Bugatti test driver] Andy Wallace in the car, not tell him about the gearbox and see if he notices anything strange,” Mate jokes as he guns the Miami Vice-white ’Segg around Dunsfold. “It can heel and toe better than me.” But the Bugatti-Rimac boss is immediately confident and CvK’s murmurs of “uhh, slow corner here” are drowned out by the V8 blare. “Wow, it’s a like a motorcycle!” Mate is impressed. “When I heard you’d thought of this gearbox, I was like ‘Damn why didn’t I think of that?’ Let’s go for a cooldown lap...” Fat chance. He boots it and charges headlong back down the runway into triple-figure speeds.

Rob’s turn begins more awkwardly. “What’s the most elegant way of getting in? Arse first?” “Right leg, bum, left leg” is Christian’s recommendation. Safely seated, Rob gives his first impressions.

When we’re at Pebble Beach or Goodwood there’s usually a million people around us so we can’t really talk

“F*****g amazing. The whole thing is bonkers,” he gushes, cooing at the dials. The Singer maestro predictably masters the old school gearbox quickly (“This is fabulous”) but finds the power delivery breathtaking. Well, it is triple what his 911s usually aim for. And mastering the CC’s fury is complicated by the fact Rob has no idea which way the TG track goes. “It’s left here. Sorry, right,” fumbles Christian as they bear down on Followthrough. But despite the dodgy pace notes, Rob’s having fun in his first hypercar. He congratulates Koenigsegg’s inventor in chief with typical straight talking Britishness. “Dude, you’re a f*****g magician.”

Once safely back in the pits Rob gets stuck into the details. “Forget the gearbox – look at the f*****g sun visors! Fabulous.” Meanwhile Christian pops the engine cover and blips the zero flywheel engine for his assembled rivals, calling it “rock ’n’ roll”. Mate admits this is a useful day out of the office. “When we’re at Pebble Beach or Goodwood there’s usually a million people around us so we can’t really talk. This is great – we’ve already been discussing suppliers, who to use, who not to work with, technical solutions. We already touched on five different things.”

Bugatti Mistral

“I’m not gonna drive it like I stole it, like you did – you’re a crazy man.” Christian hasn’t driven so far today, and he’s promising caution as he feels the quad turbo force of a W16 powered Bugatti for the first time ever. “I’m not as confident on my driving style as you!” Mate refuses to take slow for an answer. “You’ve got to feel it flat out – that’s what it’s built for!”

Ever the engineering obsessive, Christian is quickly fascinated by the Mistral’s husky turbo backing vocals. “You have these crazy breathers – I was wondering if you have the roof on, if it sucks the roof off.” CvK is impressed by the smoothness of the downshifts and the car’s agility. “When people say a Bugatti is only built for straight lines, that’s when you know they’ve never driven a Bugatti,” quips Mate, sensing a sale.

“And there’s not a lot of wind buffeting” notes the Swede, as Mate swallows a comment about messing up his hair. Instead, he talks about the blowoff valve sounding cool. “Yeah it’s absolutely wild, just over your head, like a dragon,” reckons CvK. “And I love how it’s talking to you when you’re coming on and off the throttle.”

It’s so refined... but brutal at the same time. What a balance!

And he’s using the throttle too. So much for taking it easy. “You’re pushing it nicely – not bad,” concedes Mate. “It’s so smooth and friendly and nice. Easy can be boring, but it’s not boring at all. It’s fun and exciting and the noise has an argument with you...”

Rob’s had a few laps to learn the track, but is also popping his Bugatti cherry. “Consider me excited.” He’s similarly fascinated by the whooshing soundtrack and Mate pulls his signature party trick of having the driver listen out for the moment the second pair of sequential turbos engage and the Mistral summons all 1,578bhp. “It’s so refined... but brutal at the same time,” is Rob’s first impression. “What a balance!”

As Rob coasts back to base, Christian waits, noting the brakes are smoking just a tad. “We did some sideways action,” smirks Mate, feeling the tyres. “Oh yeah, a dab of oppo” grins Rob. “Where Christian’s car is brutal in a fantastic way, this is brutal but also has a level of refinement and smoothness to it – they’re very different beasts.”

Singer DLS

Mr vK is first to fold himself into the diminutive DLS and immediately opens another engineering file in his big brain database. “So this is all carbon – how much lighter is it to the cars that Singer was building previously?” Rob doesn’t give a number but acknowledges: “This is the first car we did with carbon doors, but it’s built quite different to the cars we’re doing now.”

Then it fails to start. Clutch in, brakes on, twist key... nothing. Just as Rob leans out the door to call for his mechanics to assist, the 4.0-litre Williams engineered flat six growls into life.

“I haven’t driven so many old Porsches but you do feel some of the old Beetle in here still,” Christian observes, to agreement from Rob. “You’ve got 500 horsepower and 9,500rpm. Don’t be afraid to spank it.”

Christian occasionally struggles with what he calls ‘toe and heel’ but quickly adapts to the 911’s ‘brake in a straight line, slow in, fast out’ technique. “You’re driving it perfectly!” comes the encouragement from the passenger seat, and CvK is pleased with the car’s balance and how the steering weights up with feedback through the corners.

“It feels old school, but more contemporary than I was expecting. There’s so much connection to the road which you lose in modern cars – you’ve distilled the 911’s nature into something [the original engineers] would never have known it could be,” is Christian’s summing up. “I’m sure Mate will scare you more,” he adds. “I may never see you again...” replies Rob.

The agility, the driving dynamics, the performance, and details, and quality. Just perfect

Over to Mate, who is a Singer customer in waiting and has spoken at length in previous interviews not only of his admiration for Singer, but also his dreams of creating his own perfect restomod – a lightweight BMW E30 M3 with the V10 from an old M5 mated with a manual gearbox. Will he suffer any buyer’s remorse when finally letting a Singer reimagined 911 off the leash?

“This feels so special just in the first metres,” he exclaims. That’ll be a ‘no’ on the order form regret then. He’s straight to the red line in the first three gears and hollering with approval, agreeing with Christian about the chatty steering – and tricky downshifts. But within two laps he’s mastered the gearbox and had it sideways enough that Rob offers to disable the ESP entirely. He spins at Chicago – and immediately heads back for another attempt, nailed with a flourish of sideways and another visit to the rev limiter. “This must be one of my top three motoring experiences,” he glows. Rob looks like he’s just won a Grammy.

“Ohh the gearbox – just perfection! There was a time when no one wanted a manual, Ferrari stopped doing it... why? It’s a joy. I’ve never tried a gearbox this satisfying to use. And then the agility, the driving dynamics, the performance, and details, and quality. Just perfect.”

All three bosses take this opportunity to compare notes. Christian posits that while 500 horsepower isn’t a lot, he likes that the car never feels like it needs more. Rob politely suggests there’s an intimidation factor to using all the throttle in the other cars not so present in the Singer. Mate suggests Christian analyses the Singer’s gearbox to improve the shift action in his synthesised transmission. The word ‘perfect’ is getting thrown around a lot...

Rimac Nevera R

And with that, the bosses saunter over to the final, fastest car of the day. “This is the car we used to break 24 world records in one day,” says Mate of the car with his name on the badge. It will hold those records for just over three weeks, before Koenigsegg hits back. These guys have a very healthy rivalry indeed – though in hindsight, perhaps this was the perfect opportunity for Christian to spy on what the world’s fastest EV could actually do...

“This car is a pre-series prototype – it has 63,000km on it. So the interior is a little worn down – but yeah, just give it a go!” says Mate before jumping into the passenger seat and talking Christian through the motor torque distribution and driving modes before they tee up a launch. “No engine to warm up,” grins Mate. He knows the forces that they’re about to summon, and forces his body back into the seat in anticipation. Brace, brace, brace...

“How heavy? Ah, 2.3 tonnes? You don’t really feel it. And the cool thing is you feel the power but it’s not at all scary or overpowered,” is CvK’s first impression, agreeing with TG from our world exclusive road test. “It feels very natural, just get in and drive, no surprises at all.” Mate says he calls it ‘teleportation’ to move this fast, and cheekily notes “nothing gets close for performance – maybe a Jesko Attack I guess?”

The nerd kings discuss software, battery temperatures, weight, and cell capacity while loping back to the pits. Mate recommends one more launch now the tyres are warm. His driver agrees. “Wow – that kick! That must be the world record for two CEOs accelerating...”

Mate isn’t easily frightened, and is game for unleashing drift mode. The resulting tank slapper paints black lines

Can Rob beat that, in a car the opposite of everything Singers stand for? He goes very quiet, which shows he’s concentrating. Mate advises him not to make such aggressive corrections on the steering, as the Nevera R’s brain is already making its own corrections. “It’s a whole different level,” Rob manages. “I think I s**t my pants,” Mate replies.

Rob is keen to know how the brakes hold up against the kerbweight, with Mate explaining that the regen helps ease their workload. “It just feels so usable!” the Brit exclaims. “It’s not intimidating, even though I just nearly killed us.”

Mate isn’t easily frightened, and is game for unleashing drift mode. The resulting tank slapper paints black lines all the way out of Chicago, but Rob saves his scariest moment for his launch control experience, letting go of the wheel entirely as the car sprints to 100mph in 3.9 seconds. “Hold the steering!” Mate grimaces as Rob regains control with a grunt.

Then there’s just one thing left to do – the traditional Mate Rimac drift lap, with Rob riding shotgun. “I’ve never done this on Cup 2 R tyres.” Doesn’t seem to be a problem in the end, with Hammerhead treated to a series of powerslides chased by a smoke trail the Red Arrows would choke on.

“What a great time we live in,” sums up Rob. “So many different flavours,” Christian agrees. “If you’re allowed to build these cars and there are customers to pay for it – we’re so lucky,” Mate adds. And with that, back to the boardroom.