KOENIGSEGG GEMERA

Exclusive b500 Q&A with Head of Design, Sasha Selipanov

Iremember It was a warm sunny day in mid September and my phone pinged and it was Sasha Selipanov sending me a ‘What’s App’ message. “Hey Del did you get the photos”? I did indeed, as well as the exclusive sketch for b500, and thank you.

I had been introduced to Sasha a few days earlier by Etienne (Salomé), who has worked with Sasha at Bugatti and more recently with a hand in the Gemera interior design, and suggested an intro for this issue of b500. In just over a year with Koenigsegg Sasha has already managed to carve his name in the history books, as Koenigsegg’s first official head of design (after CEO Christian Von Koenigsegg), and then straight out of the gate designing the Koenigsegg Gemera, a four-seater Mega-GT with a hybrid powertrain producing a total of 1270kW of power, unveiled at the cancelled 2020 Geneva motor show.

Not a bad start, but Sasha has had a pretty good design career already, before joining what he describes as his “dream job”. After graduating from the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena in 2005 Sasha was hired by the Volkswagen Group as an exterior designer and it was here among other cars he was involved in the design of the Lamborghini Huracán.

By 2014 Sasha was in Molsheim and head of exterior design at Bugatti, where he was responsible not least for the 2016 Chiron (2016), one of the fastest and most powerful production cars ever created. Making important steps towards his Swedish goal, he then joined Genesis, the newly founded premium subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Group, creating cars like the Genesis Essentia Concept (2018) and then in 2019 Sasha arrived at Koenigsegg.

Sasha, welcome to b500 and we appreciate you giving us the time to answer a few questions.

b500: You have openly said that your dream job would be with Koenigsegg, so now you’ve arrived is it everything you had hoped for? Yes, it really is! It’s what I had hoped for and much more. Koenigsegg is a car company unlike any other. There is so much passion and creativity here, its a fantastic work environment.

b500: Obvious question. Whats the boss like? In one word, exceptional. Christian’s story of creating a successful sports

car company at such a young age is unprecedented. Having spent a bit of time working with him I now realise what a remarkable blend of talents and character traits it has taken to succeed. Christian is a phenomenal engineer, inventor, problem solver, entrepreneur, motivator and leader. Christian’s knowledge is vast in scope but also very precise in detail, this makes his feedback logical and easy to relate to. On top of this, hardly a day goes by at work without him surprising everyone with his creativity and his completely out of the box thinking. It really is a killer combination of talents and skills, as I said, in one word: exceptional.

b500: Why is it important for you to design hypercars? There are two main reasons. Firstly, I see a hypercar as an ultimate expression of a car. Performance, materials, aerodynamics, thermodynamics, safety, ergonomics… everything is on the very limit of technology and feasibility. This is what makes designing them so much fun. It feels like a more purified, essential design process because its unconstrained by regular car production limitations and only driven by science, technology and creativity.

Second reason is more personal. I remember being absolutely blown away as a kid by a Ferrari F40 poster and this life altering event is one of the main reasons why I became a car designer. I guess a big part of my motivation in designing hypercars is to pass along this passion to kids. Maybe in their iPad and iPhone filled lives some of them will see a car I worked on and have their life altered the way mine was…

b500: Koenigsegg has always had a clear design, so how difficult was it for you to design a car that then might have to break that mould with your very first challenge. Gemera is a car unlike any other with its 4 seat cabin, unprecedented drivetrain and packaging. However first and foremost it is a true Koenigsegg and therefore its design had to be instantly recognisable as such. We never set out to break the mould with the design of the Gemera: Christian and I worked closely together to ensure that the Gemera’s looks fit in the established brand DNA and into the lineage. There are of course design themes and engineering solutions that make this possible: wrap-around windshield and cockpit, Koenigsegg’s unique dihedral synchro-helix doors, surfacing inspired by the aquatic world and certainly the logic/innovation driven spirit which guides all the decisions during the design development. Gemera’s goal is to be a technological marvel and a clean sheet design while at the same time fitting into the Koenigsegg family seamlessly, like a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

b500: Whats your favourite designed part on the Gemera and why? I hate breaking up designs into “parts’. For me it either works as a whole or it doesn’t! This includes not only the styling of the car but the entirety: engineering concept, packaging, performance, looks, ergonomics, usability, even sound! All these aspects need to be in perfect harmony for the product to make sense. This is precisely what we were striving for while working on the Gemera.

b500: I appreciate you can’t give too much away, but can I loosely ask what else are you involved with and working on, inside and outside of Koenigsegg? A good question actually! I’ll focus mainly on the “outside” because alongside working for Koenigsegg I am also CEO and Chief Designer of RAW Design House, a design consultancy that offers works with external clients. We have existed for less than a year but have already had a few very exciting projects.

I believe that we have a unique set of talents at RAW and a design process unprecedented in its efficiency. Koenigsegg Gemera is a proof of this: the design phase of that car was literally

times shorter than anything tried before. We have eliminated a lot of waste by cutting out 2D from our design work entirely. Our designers including myself sketch directly in Alias creating 3D models that are only a single step away from A-Class. We are able to create 3D sketches at the same pace as is usual for a classical 2D output. All the design decisions are done directly on the base of our 3D models. This makes the process very streamlined and lean: design refinement, engineering cross-checks, feasibility, prototyping, tooling they all benefit from the fact that a design exists in 3D far earlier in the process than what would have been the case with a traditional 2D-3D-Clay-Scan-3D.

You can probably tell, I am very passionate about this approach. I believe this is the way forward and RAW Design House is here to share this workflow and its benefits with clients around the world.

Regarding whats in store at Koenigsegg, I just have to say that every time we brainstorm we end up with more ideas than can be realised in a single lifetime. The company has achieved so much already and has created truly amazing cars, and yet the level of creativity regarding future projects is just on another level.

b500: Can you give us an insight to a typical day at ‘the office’? A typical day at the office starts with an unforgettable experience of walking through the production line and seeing

a few amazing cars getting built! If lucky I’ll catch one of the cars leaving for the runway (our test track) in the morning, and this sets the mood for the rest of the day! RAW Design House has the ability to work from a remote location on external projects, but when we work for Koenigsegg we sit directly on the engineering floor and share space with the rest of the team. Christian’s office door is always open and we discuss all topics without any delay: no need to schedule CEO reviews weeks into the future as was the case in my previous workplaces. On some days there is an opportunity to go to the runway and see the cars in action, sometimes getting a ride and a couple of times even driving myself. Working at Koenigsegg is unlike any other car design experience I’ve had so far: I am finally much closer to the cars, and this is what I’ve always dreamed of.

b500: Last question has to be whimsical. If you could travel back in time, to any time and be involved with just one car design, what car would that be… I am passionate about car history and I do a lot of reading up on the early days of the industry. Of course I’d love to have been a fly on the wall for all the big historic milestones like the 250 GTO, 330 P4, GT40 etc but to be fair they all turned out perfect without me. Honestly, I am much more interested in what the future holds and how to make a contribution to that. I think I am in a great place for this, here at Koenigsegg and at RAW.

b500: Many thanks Sasha, and I’m sure I speak for all b500 readers when I say we look forward to whatever comes next from you and the team at Koenigsegg.