The 70 or so road trippers who signed up for this year’s 6to6 European Tour were looking forward to setting off from Athens, Greece, and crossing eight countries and two mountain ranges on their way to Monaco. One participant didn’t make it out of Athens on the first day: Not long after he left the hotel, a $3 million Koenigsegg Jesko Attack Nur Edition in raw form carbon fiber with 24 carat gold accents caught fire while driving through the city at low speed, turn into a bonfire that little remained but a pile of carbon shards that had been melted into an engine. The Swedish automaker had only delivered about 30 of the planned 125 Jeskos at the time. The Swedish mothership sent an engineer to bring the remains back to Sweden for an autopsy. In an Instagram post, CEO Christian von Koenigsegg explained that the source of the fire was a leak in the car’s pressurized hydraulic line.
He said the systems that carried other flammable fluids were intact, namely the engine and transmission oil systems and the fuel tank. “However,” he wrote, “there was a streak of hydraulic fluid behind the car on the road. In view of this we examined the hydraulic system under pressure, the only system that contained this fluid.” And sure enough, that was the culprit, the hose that was “corroded at the rear of the car.”
The company is monitoring the hydraulic system of every car it produces and delivers. It’s also working on a software update that will monitor hydraulic pressure and, in the event of a leak, can shut down the system in less than a second. Based on the date of the post, that software should be on its way to cars or very close to it. Once the cars are updated, Koenigsegg says they’ll be safe to drive again.
As for the two people in the car in Athens, they came out unscathed. At the end of his message, Christian added: “We are also incredibly grateful to the owner of the car in Greece for his continued support and for giving him a new car so he can continue his Koenigsegg journey.” This is a company whose customer service is almost as fast and comprehensive as its record-breaking cars.
Oh, and bring on the Facebook Marketplace profiteers: Autoblog Greece (no relationship) reported someone has been offering raw carbon fiber pieces for sale, claiming without proof that they came from Jesko. Which makes perfect sense. Because Facebook Marketplace.
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