At The Quail, an event during Monterey Car Week back in August, Koenigsegg caught us off guard when it revealed a retro-homage to its first ever production car, the CC8S, delivered to customers 20 years ago. This new £3.3m CC850 has the same sparse design, but is bigger, sits on shared underpinnings with its latest hypercar, the Jesko, and by some considerable wizardry turns the nine-speed auto into a ‘simulated’ six-speed manual. I too donned a yellow hat and orange vest for a tour of the deeply fascinating CC850 from the only man who knows every nut and bolt intimately…

Photography: Mark Fagelson

TopGear: Christian, we need to stop buying our clothes in the same place.

Christian von Koenigsegg: Ha, unfortunately it’s still a building site and Sweden is pretty strict on rules, so we can’t just roam around here freely until they hand over the keys to the new factory.

TG: Give us the elevator pitch on the CC850.

CvK: This is a homage to our beginnings. It’s very naked, simplistic, the original idea of a Scandinavian supercar. We felt it was a good opportunity to imprint the origins of Koenigsegg one more time, but take it into the future with modern technology and improved ergonomics… and the response has been staggering.

TG: And the name?

CvK: The first car we ever produced and delivered to a customer in 2002 was a CC8S – competition coupe, eight-cylinder, supercharged – it took the Guinness World Record for the most powerful homologated…