Koenigsegg Gemera Goes V8-Only Because Nobody Wanted A Three-Cylinder

You could never accuse Koenigsegg of lacking ambition. Take the Gemera, its upcoming four-seater ‘family car’. When it was announced back in 2020, we were all amazed and slightly baffled by its engine. Called the ‘Tiny Friendly Giant’, it was a 2.0-litre, twin-turbocharged three-cylinder, which by itself made around 600bhp, and would have been part of a roughly 1400bhp hybrid system. It also, somehow, didn’t have camshafts. Don’t ask us.

Anyway, this is all in the past tense because company founder and boss Christian von Koenigsegg has said that, due to low demand, the three-cylinder Gemera isn’t happening anymore. It turns out that the vast majority of customers dropping an ‘if you have to ask’ sum on a four-seater hybrid hypercar wanted the big ol’ 5.0-litre twin-turbo V8 that was originally announced as an option last year.

Von Koenigsegg confirmed the news to Top Gear, saying that “In a nutshell, they all turned into V8s. There were so few left that asked for a three-cylinder, we managed to convince almost all of them” to go down to the eight-pot route.

Said V8 is closely related to the one that’s powered the Swedish firm’s more recent two-seater hypercars, including the current Jesko and CC850. In the Gemera, it’s in ‘hot vee’ form with turbos nestling between the cylinder banks and the exhaust system running along the top of the engine.

By itself, it produces 1479bhp and, in combination with the 789bhp ‘Dark Matter’ electric motor, the entire system produces a massive peak of 2268bhp and 2028lb ft of torque.

While it’s unsurprising that not many hypercar buyers were particularly interested in an engine of the same configuration found in a Ford Puma, it’s nonetheless a shame, as the Tiny Friendly Giant sounded like a deeply impressive piece of engineering.

Never say never, though, as von Koenigsegg went on to tell Top Gear that “we’re still working on it,” and it might “eventually” find its way into the Gemera further down the line.