Listen to the Koenigsegg Gemera fire up for the first time

Some caveats. It’s not making the full 600bhp, and it’s only revving to roughly half the rpms it’s capable of. There’s also still a lot of fine-tuning to be done with the exhaust sound and the engine’s responsiveness, along with how this ‘Tiny Friendly Giant’ interplays with the rest of the car.

And yet. Boss Christian von Koenigsegg has fired up the prototype Gemera’s engine for the first time, and there is nothing - nothing - that suggests it is ‘tiny’ or indeed ‘friendly’. The frequencies emanating from the top of the Gemera advocate quite the opposite. Like, say, an old V8 muscle car. Or a dragster.

And yet. It is actually tiny. It’s a 2.0-litre twin-turbocharged three cylinder engine, showcasing Koenigsegg’s ‘Freevalve’ technology that does away with cams for better valve timing and thus, efficiency and power.

Here's how the Koenigsegg Gemera's camless three-cylinder engine works

“The technology in this car is otherworldly,” Koenigsegg said. He described the car as a “power monster, but a friendly monster”, noting how it was “easy and fun to drive”.

As mentioned, this car – Test Car 1, or ‘TC1’ – still has a long way to go before it’s the finished product. “We will increase the power level, the rpms... now we’re revving to about 4,500rpm, we have another 4,000rpm and more to go,” Koenigsegg said.

When finished, the Gemera will offer something quite extraordinary. That 2.0-litre twin-turbo ‘Tiny Friendly Giant’ will kick out 600bhp, matched up to three electric motors to produce 1,700bhp and 2,580lb ft of torque in total. That means 0-62mph in 1.9s and up to 250mph. All this in a four-seater ‘family’ car that gets heated and cooled cupholders for goodness sake.

Before the cupholders though, “a little bit of a flavour of the car”…