Cars can represent vastly different things to different people. For an angst-ridden teenager just coming to grips with emergence into adulthood, a car is freedom and self-sufficiency. To the shallow and conceited, a car is status, a symbol of power and influence. To racers, a car is a collection of numbers, potential energy to be unleashed.

But what if you’re a carmaker? What do these machines look like to the people who actually spend their lives creating them?

Surely, it’s a bit different for everyone, and can’t be easily explained in a sub-three minute YouTube video. Christian von Koenigsegg,->ke43 however, gave it a shot anyway.

As the driving force behind the otherworldly One:1, it should come as no a surprise that Koenigsegg pours his passion into what he does. He says it’s not work, but rather an exercise in creativity and the satisfaction of a hunger to produce something that’s never been seen before. For Koenigsegg, it’s about taking an idea as far as it can go, testing the limits of what’s possible, mixing imagination with technical competency to create a product that’s, in a word, astonishing.

The man sums it up like this: “When you have reached a level, you can always reach another level, and when you reach that level, even though it’s incredible and fantastic, and no one else has ever built it before, you can always reach the next level because you get new platforms along the way.”

Which begs the question: what comes next?

Click Continue Reading to learn more about the Koenigsegg One:1.

2015 Koenigsegg One:1

The One:1 is the actualization of an insane idea: one horsepower for every kilogram of weight. For anyone even remotely familiar with power to weight ratios, such a figure takes advanced mental gymnastics to even begin to comprehend. Somehow, though, Koenigsegg pulled it off.

Made from ultra-light spaceship materials, the One:1 weighs a mere 1,360 kg, or 2,998 pounds. Concurrently, output from its aluminum, twin-turbo, 5.0-liter V-8 is rated at 1,340 horsepower at 7,500 rpm and 1,011 pound-feet of torque at 6,000 rpm. That makes for some simply ludicrous acceleration figures, including a 0-400 km/h (248.5 mph) time of 20 seconds.

Only six were made, each costing a healthy $2.4 million.