Top Gear’s Paddy, Freddie and Harris share tips for getting through lockdown
We’ve handed the keys to Sun Motors to our comrades at Top Gear.
Paddy, Freddie and Harris share their lockdown tips, read all about the Koenigsegg Gemera from this month’s Top Gear magazine. Enjoy.
Paddy
Films/TV: I’ve been revisiting a few classics from back in the day. They instantly put me in a good mood and took me back to happier times. Namely before I met Chris Harris. Coming To America and Stir Crazy are the last couple I watched.
Books: I’ve no time to properly get into a book at the min, but I believe there’s a belter coming out at the end of the year, The Paddy McGuinness Life Story.
Food: I’m doing more from-scratch cooking now and I’m loving it. Chips, mash, roast, boiled . . . I can turn my hand to most things potato-based.
Freddie
Films/TV: I’ve finished Tiger King, Save Me Too and The Nest. Looking forward to AfterLife 2.
Food: I’m eating everything, having so many wraps.
Gaming: Never play computer games, although the kids love FIFA. I’d sooner be outside during the day. I’ve been cycling most days.
Books: Going to read this book my mum gave me, Cold Bath Street. It’s set in Ribbleton in Preston where I grew up.
Harris
Films/TV: I’ve been watching a lot of Dukes Of Hazzard with the kids and lots of historic rallying on YouTube in the evenings over a whisky.
Books: I’m having a clear-out of old magazines and if I see something interesting, I stop lumping stuff and just sit and read it. I now realise it might be one of my favourite activities.
Food: I like slow cooking at the mo. It’s when you’re removing some short ribs from the oven and McGuinness posts an Instagram image of himself doing weights and claiming to have “made some chips” that you realise not all Top Gear presenters are very clever.
Honey, I scared the kids! Koenigsegg's 250mph family car
The Koenigsegg Gemera is a car aimed at the eco-conscious billionaire who can’t cope with anything less than hypercar performance . . . and doesn’t want to leave the kids at home.
If that sounds a bit niche, that’s because it is.
Christian von Koenigsegg, founder and CEO of his self-titled Swedish hypercar company, has made the world’s fastest plug-in hybrid four-seater a reality, because it’s the kind of thing he wants to drive.
“We saw a hole in the marketplace. The most extreme, expensive, luxury four-seater you can get is a Rolls-Royce.
“This has nothing to do with a Rolls-Royce, it’s a completely different experience. I built it because I wanted it personally. This is my type of car and it didn’t exist.” Fortunately, it’s our kind of car, too, dripping with innovation.
There are eight heated and cooled cupholders – “you can keep your milkshake going in there for an hour or two while you watch Netflix and travel at 250mph” – a three-cylinder engine he calls the Tiny Friendly Giant and, despite an extra row of seats, a design that’s every bit as mean, low, wide and gobby as the Jesko (that’s Koenigsegg’s 300mph, two-seater hypercar) albeit with more chiselled lines and horizontal instead of vertical eyes.
For £1.5million, you get four seats, four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering, three electric motors, a 2-litre twin-turbo 600bhp “freevalve” three-cylinder engine, max combined power output of 1,700bhp, 30 miles of electric-only range, 0-62mph in 1.9 seconds and a top speed of 250mph.
This is very much a car that deals in mind-altering numbers.
It feels appropriate for Koenigsegg – a father of two – to be the first hypercar kingpin to move into the world of four-seaters, because you’ll struggle to find a more family-orientated company.
His wife, Halldora, is Chief Operating Officer. Jesko? That’s his dad, who helped him set up the company when he was a broke 22-year-old with a dream. Gemera is home-made, too.
“We were having a family dinner with my parents and my mother came up with the name. ‘Ge’ means ‘to give’ in Swedish and ‘mera’ is ‘more’. So, to give more; you get more seats, you get more space, you can share the excitement.” Inside, the colour might be too banana-flavoured for some, but getting in and out is simple with the huge, twisting carbon-fibre doors.
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Even in the back it’s pure luxury with your own entertainment screen, wireless phone charging and isofix points for brave toddlers.
“I envisioned this car with someone driving up to the Oscars,” Christian says. “There is the red carpet and the star comes out from the back. There is no folding of seats or squeezing past the B-pillar, they walk out as gracefully as if they were sitting in the front.”
Over to you, Hollywood A-listers.
KEY FACTS: KOENIGSEGG GEMERA
Price: £1.5m
Engine: 2-litre twin turbo with 3 electric motors
Power: 1,700bhp
0-62mph: 1.9 secs
Top speed: 250mph
EV range: 30 miles
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