Why even multimillionaire sports car CEOs commute in Toyotas
Koenigsegg is a Swedish high-performance sports car manufacturer known for their otherworldly vehicles. These extraordinary vehicles come with extraordinary price tags, ranging from $1.7 million to $3.65 million depending on the model. So, it's surprising that the brand's multimillionaire CEO, Christian Von Koenigsegg commutes to work in a Toyota, according to a recent Instagram post.
The Japanese automaker produces some of the most popular vehicles in the world, from the small and resilient Toyota Corolla to the practical and mighty Toyota Grand Highlander (a recent addition to the family). The automaker's portfolio is among the most diverse in the industry. It produces efficient hybrids like the Toyota Prius and thrilling sports cars such as the Toyota GR Supra. So, what's the multimillionaire CEO of Koenigsegg's Toyota of choice?
Christian Von Koenigsegg commutes in a Toyota GR Yaris. 'GR', short for Gazoo Racing, is Toyota's motorsport division. This division participates in automotive competitions pushing the limits of the company's engineering chops. There are currently three Gazoo Racing models in Toyota's United States portfolio: the GR Supra, the GR86, and the GR Corolla. Von Koenigsegg's GR Yaris hatchback is offered in several countries and regions including Europe, Asia, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and more. The Yaris nameplate is not available for the United States or Canada anymore due to sales trends.
According to Top Gear, the latest, GR Yaris starts at around 42,690 Euros which equates to $46,707.34. So, the CEO of Koenigsegg drives a car that costs under $50,000 despite his incredible wealth and company affiliation. The question is, what's so special about this tiny hatchback, and why would Koenigsegg drive anything but a supercar?
The latest iteration of the Toyota GR Yaris sports a 1.6-liter turbocharged three-cylinder engine that produces 280 horsepower and 287 pound-feet of torque. That may not seem very mighty until you consider the GR Yaris' incredibly small size. It only weighs around 2,821 pounds. The hatchback has a top speed of 143 miles per hour and rockets from 0-60 miles per hour in around 5.2 seconds.
The Toyota GR Yaris is extremely quick for an affordable hatchback and its unique body style and size make it even more enjoyable to drive. In an age where automakers like GMC are producing 1,000-horsepower monsters (the Hummer EV Pickup) small, turbocharged Japanese models like the GR Yaris are still appealing to even the wealthiest consumers. Sure, Koenigsegg's CEO can afford just about any production vehicle on the market, but millions of consumers choose the Toyota brand over competitors for a reason.
Toyota completed its first passenger car, the Model AA, way back in 1936. A whopping eighty-nine years later, the Japanese automaker has sold millions of units in the most competitive markets in the world, including the United States.
What sets Toyota apart from other automakers is its attention to build quality and emerging trends. A study by iSeeCars.com concluded that the top five longest-lasting vehicles were all Toyota models. The longevity of vehicles like the original Toyota Land Cruiser and the Toyota Corolla is the stuff of legend.
Toyota became the first automaker to mass produce a hybrid vehicle in 1997 with the Prius. Since then, several industry giants have benchmarked its hybrid models. The company currently produces 15 hybrid nameplates for the United States, providing a wide variety of affordable eco-friendly options. Some of Toyota's most popular models are now offered as hybrids.
The company is no slouch on the performance side of things despite its best-selling models being mainstream cars and SUVs like the Camry and RAV4. The Toyota MR2, Toyota Supra, and Toyota 86 are well-liked among sports car enthusiasts. Toyota has something for everyone, and there's no greater company cosign than the CEO of Koenigsegg cruising to work in a GR Yaris.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why multimillionaire Koenigsegg sports car CEO commutes in a Toyota
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Car and Driver
5 hours ago
- Car and Driver
View Photos of the 1990 Toyota 4Runner
read the full review While you might miss the removable roof panel, you won't miss it once you realize how much better the new 4Runner is without it.
Car and Driver
5 hours ago
- Car and Driver
1990 Toyota 4Runner Driven: Finally a Four-Door
From the August 1989 issue of Car and Driver. Since the dusty dawn of modern off-roading, most mini-trucks with enclosed rear passenger quarters made do with two doors. That's changing faster than the weathered face of the still-wild West. Consider Toyota's 4Runners. Tall and tough trucklets from the rogues' gallery of 4Runners have glowered on the wanted lists of sport-utility buyers for years. Now Toyota has fattened its hand with a rework of the whole 4Runner lot—including the handy option of hanging an extra pair of doors on each truck. The new range includes two-door, four-wheel-drive models that are strongly reminiscent of the early tough-guy 4Runners, plus thoroughly civilized four-doors fitted with a choice of two- or four-wheel drive. Each chassis layout includes two engine choices: a four-cylinder or a V-6. The rear-drive models offer only a four-speed automatic transmission, but those propelled by four wheels can be paired with either the automatic or a five-speed manual gearbox. Toyota also offers a shift-on-the-move system that lets you snick into four-wheel drive at speeds up to 50 mph. Called 4WDemand, it's standard with the V-6 and optional with the four-cylinder. View Photos Larry Griffin | Car and Driver Elbow past the extra doors, the added civility, and the familiar looks and logos and you see that the new breed was bred to be "bad" from the knobbies up. Yet Toyota's priority was to make the 4Runner all-around better by making it all-of-a-piece. That meant doing away with yesteryear's detachable fiberglass top. The 4Runner made its reputation for toughness as a pickup saddled with make-do weather protection—something like an early Conestoga wagon, albeit far more hospitable. It worked: for the past three years, Toyota's saddle-soaping of details put the 4Runner atop the sport-utility ranks in the JD. Power & Associates' Compact Truck Customer Satisfaction Index. Still, the factory wants the 4Runner to show schoolmarm manners without giving up old-hand toughness. So rather than tacking on a fibrous shell, Toyota builds a steel roof integral with the new and stronger unit body. Now it's all tight. Depending upon how you buy options, you can brew up fixings from milquetoast mild to mountain-man wild. The trucks' stance, sheetmetal, and exterior trim leave no doubt that Toyota wants its 4Runners to rise from the landscape with a meaty presence. Their curb weights, which range from about 3600 to 4150 pounds, live up to their looks. View Photos Larry Griffin | Car and Driver Taking a seat in many two-door mini-trucks calls first for clambering up to cab height—a tallish task due to most mini-trucks' lofty pretensions of being barely minimized maxi-trucks. Then the tight packaging pinches access to the back seat, even for flexible youths. Two doors are fine as far as they go, suggesting a certain spartan sportiness, but older and stiffer folks can scissor into the back only through torso-twisting contortions. Thanks to the more modern four-door mini-trucks, including the new 4Runner, passengers' transitory aches and pains go the way of Conestogas on the Santa Fe Trail: into oblivion. Consider mainstream sport-utility wagons that take on five-door convenience through four doors and a tailgate: the Isuzu Trooper II, the Jeep Cherokee/Wagoneer, and the Mitsubishi Montero. (Toyota's Land Cruiser, heftier and costlier than the 4Runner, has hauled the sport-utility faithful since about the time Moses said he didn't want to get his sandals wet. Age works against the Land Cruiser, though, when you idle it up beside products of fresher thinking.) The new 4Runners embody talents extracted from the mountain goat, the Conestoga, and the touring car. Meant to traverse the badlands, they also ditty-bop through the good life. You feel the newfound structural solidity and a blissful infusion of mechanical smoothness. The isolation from NVH (noise, vibration, and harshness) often makes the 4Runners feel eerily removed from the action of the moment. View Photos Larry Griffin | Car and Driver We sampled a gaggle of 4Runners in the deserts, forests, and mountains of northern New Mexico. The Toyotas had to brave power-sapping altitudes, making us wish for instant turbo kits, but revealed a glimpse of their repertoire through the 4wd paradise between Santa Fe and Taos. The 4Runners' interiors come across as handsome as the exteriors, which you could classify as strong, silent types. The designs and materials applied to Toyota's truck interiors rank alongside those fitted into its best cars. That puts them near the top for concept, comfort, fit, and finish. From basic seating to complex sound systems, the top-notch materials, logical design, and righteous execution seem to come through. Those parts we can be pretty sure of. We'll reserve judgment on the suspensions, brakes, and powertrains. View Photos Larry Griffin | Car and Driver Each 4Runner's chunky nose sits up on control arms, torsion bars, gas shocks, and an anti-roll bar. The rear holds up its end with a rigid axle, four trailing links, coil springs, gas shocks, and an anti-roll bar. The power-assisted steering turns via a recirculating ball (and slowly, at 5.2 turns lock-to-lock, which helps cushion off-road nastiness). The burly brake system bulges with vented discs up front and drums in the rear. We focused on the upmarket 4Runner we'd be most attracted to, the 4WD SR5 V-6 with the five-speed stick. Toyota outfitted it with optional 7.0-by-15-inch alloy wheels and matching 31x10.50R-15 M+S tires, plus a standard 10.2 inches of rock-avoiding ground clearance. The sweet manual gearbox helps sustain zip that would otherwise be lost to the elasticity of the even-smoother automatic. In the high country especially, the 150-hp 3.0-liter V-6 pulls its load much more easily than the 116-hp 2.4-liter four. Though unrelated, both engines are electronically fuel injected and fitted with a belt-driven single-overhead-cam layout. The four-cylinder offsets some of its horsepower disadvantage by making its peak torque at 2800 rpm, a useful 600 revs lower than the V-6's max-grunt point. Both engines pump valves and whirl cranks with lubricious ease. Very little crosstalk between components penetrates the veil of isolation that drapes the firewall and enfolds the drivetrain. View Photos Larry Griffin | Car and Driver Sport-utility vehicles now knock off more than a million sales per year. Toyota would like ten percent of this growing market by the mid-1990s, a threefold increase in its share. Because all of the vehicles we drove were prototypes, we can't predict with confidence how Toyota's new sport-utilities will do: like all strong, silent, tough guys new in town and dressed to kill, the new 4Runners remain unknown quantities. What we do know is that the 4Runner V-6 that caught our eye will sell for about $18,000. That seems a reasonable sum to pay for four-star four-play. Specifications Specifications Year Make Model Trim Vehicle Type: front-engine, rear/4-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 5-door wagon PRICE Base: $18,000 (est) //Base price of vehicle as described in specs hed// Options: Option 1, $XXXX; Option 2, $XXXX ENGINE SOHC 12-valve V-6, iron block and aluminum heads, port fuel injection Displacement: 181 in3, 2958 cm3 Power: 150 hp @ 4800 rpm Torque: 180 lb-ft @ 3400 rpm TRANSMISSION 5-speed manual CHASSIS Suspension, F/R: control arms/live axle Brakes, F/R: 11.3-in vented disc/11.6-in drum Tires: Bridgestone Desert Dueler M+S DIMENSIONS Wheelbase: 103.3 in Length: 196.5 in Width: 68.1 in Height: 67.3 in Curb Weight: 4050 lb EPA FUEL ECONOMY (PROJECTED) City/Highway: 16/18 mpg C/D TESTING EXPLAINED
New York Post
5 hours ago
- New York Post
German town offers free 2-week stay to lure people to relocate there
A German town trying to beef up its population is luring in new residents by offering them a two-week trial accommodation — on the house. Eisenhüttenstadt, around 60 miles from Berlin, was built in 1950. dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images Eisenhüttenstadt, around 60 miles from Berlin, is accepting applications for the program — which will run from Sept. 6 to 20 — until the beginning of July. Advertisement 'The project is aimed at anyone interested in moving to Eisenhüttenstadt—such as commuters, those interested in returning to the town, skilled workers, or self-employed individuals seeking a change of scenery,' the local council said in a statement, according to CNN Travel. The initiative in the city, which now has a population of around 24,000, is part of an 'innovative immigration project' named 'Make Plans Now,' the council continued. Local businesses will offer internships and job shadowing. dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images Advertisement Those enrolled in the program will also participate in activities designed just for them, including a tour of Eisenhüttenstadt, home to historical buildings from the Soviet era. One man was so captivated by its architecture that he had already moved there. 'We were traveling to Ratzdorf with friends and drove through Karl-Marx-Straße. And I saw these houses, this architecture that completely blew me away, and I said to my wife, 'I'm going to move here,'' he wrote on the town hall's Instagram account. Eisenhüttenstadt, which means Steel Mill Town, was built around a steel mill. Guests will get the chance to explore its factories as well. Advertisement The town also houses the largest integrated steelworks facility in eastern Germany, which employs 2,500 people and acts as a metals processing hub. Local businesses will also offer internships, job shadowing and conduct interviews with tourists, who can move there and join their labor force. Founded in 1950, Eisenhüttenstadt was the first town built from scratch under then East Germany's socialist government. At its peak, it boasted a population of 50,000. Advertisement It was originally named Stalinstadt, or Stalin Town, after the late Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, but was renamed after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the German reunification.
