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2015 Gumball 3000 Rally Live Journal - Day Three - Welcome to Koenigsegg

Maybe the first two days weren't all that exciting from a car enthusiast's point of view but the third day of the 2015 Gumball 3000 Rally really kicked up things a notch. But let's start from the beginning.   For some of our team members at the AnastasiaDate / AsianDate crew, the day started exactly at 12:00 AM. The joys of retro engines
2015 Gumball Coverage 85 photos
Photo: Another Brother
That's because only one of our Camaros made it into Oslo the day before, the red one having some mechanical problems just before reaching the capital city of Norway. Steve, the man who rebuilt the two said that the distributor just gave up and had to be replaced. But where do you get a distributor for a '69 Camaro on a Sunday night in Norway? To make things even worse, there was a massive holiday going on at that exact moment so nobody was working.

Luckily our logistics team had some very good connections and, contrary to popular belief, the Scandinavian countries are actually quite into old school muscle cars. Therefore, they managed to get the part in 40 minutes and have it on the Camaro that night. That morning we were ready to go and say goodbye to Oslo.

The surprise checkpoint 

With the car fixed, we set off early to make it through to Copenhagen while visiting what official Gumball 3000 people called 'a surprise checkpoint.' As it turned out, it was the Koenigsegg factory and we would get exclusive access to it. Rumors started spreading around about an actual chance to get inside of Christian von Koenigsegg's creations and take a quick lap of his airstrip.

The road to his little factory of dream cars was filled with twists and turns and all sorts of beautiful scenery. Once we were in Angelholm, we noticed just how wonderful that little town is. Reaching the airstrip where the plant is requires a drive through a beautiful park that, coincidentally or not, was filled with rare cars.

Once we reached our destination, we were greeted by an enormous crowd of enthusiasts, all of them there to see our rides. Feeling like VIPs we strolled to the HQ to meet the man himself. Unfortunately, we arrived a little late and couldn't get to talk to him in person. When our PR people reached out he was already giving a private interview. So many questions to ask... Maybe next time.

We did get to take a tour of the place where cars like the One:1 and the Regera are made though and that was amazing. Almost everything is hand-made and what isn't needs to be carefully assembled. They did ask us to turn in our cameras and our phones as they were developing new stuff over there and we weren't allowed to shoot it. The car's carbon fiber body looks amazing before it gets painted and even better afterward.

However, if it were up to me personally, I'd just add a thin layer of lacquer over the body once it is assembled and leave it at that as it is that good looking.  A representative told us that they were currently working on building a second assembly line to double the production and keep up with the demand.At the moment, they are only capable of making around 10 cars a year. Witnessing how they are being built, it makes senses.

For example, after the car is painted, it is hand-polished by a worker, a process that takes around 1,000 hours per car. The engine, a 5-liter V8 with two turbochargers, takes around 3 weeks to put together and that doesn't include actually casting the parts. We felt rather queasy leaving this 270 mph-cars-creating place wondering whether the Saudi prince that was with us was going to buy one or not.

From Angelholm to Copenhagen it was all smooth sailing, driving over beautiful bridges, going through amazing tunnels (where the engines of the cars really stood out by the way) and at one point even combining them. The Øresundsbron bridge was right ahead of us and we realized that it wasn't an ordinary one as soon as we reached it. This architecture marvel is the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe and connects two major metropolitan areas: Copenhagen, the Danish capital city, and the major Swedish city of Malmö.

15,000 people waiting for us 

After riding some 300 feet above the water, you get under it via a proper tunnel that has acoustics like nothing you've ever heard before. That's where everyone let loose and the harmony of V8, V10 and V12 units sounded like the hounds of hell.  As soon as you exit this tunnel though, you reach the capital city of Denmark and initially we thought nobody knew we were coming. I was never so wrong in my life. We just had to make it to the Rosenborg Castle. I don't have any official data but if there were 10,000 people in Oslo waiting for us, this was at least 15,000.

Talking to the people there we found that some of them actually spent 4 hours waiting for us and watching the cars roll to the finish line. Parking the vehicles was a hassle once again, as the bystanders simply wouldn't move out of the way. It was a bit like Group B rallying, only that we were doing 1 MPH. Security had to carve us a new road once again, trying to keep all the fans that were giving us thumbs ups and high fives out of the way.

After finally parking in front of the palace of the Danish royal family, it was finally time to call it a night. At least that's what you'd expect but that's not how things work here. "This is Gumball baby!' and you have to party every night. After checking in, everyone went out to a local club to see how the nightlife is like in Copenhagen. Bad luck struck again though or might've been just a case of poor planning. Being Monday, the club that we went to was filled only with Gumballers and we couldn't get a sense of how Danish people actually party. On top of that we had to wake up really early in the morning to cover the next stage that would take us from Copenhagen all the way to Amsterdam in one day.

Then again, with so many effervescent people and engines all around us, we're definitely not complaining.

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