Koenigsegg’s CEO Drives a Toyota to Work, Just Like You

Christian von Koenigsegg might make hypercars that push the boundaries of automotive engineering, but he has a commute to work like the rest of us. You’d think he would drive one of his own creations, but a recent Instagram post reveals his commuter car is something much simpler—a Toyota GR Yaris.

Toyota doesn’t offer the Yaris or the hotter GR variant in the United States, so we will live vicariously through Koenigsegg, watching him pilot the hatch to work. The little runabout has a 1.6-liter turbocharged three-cylinder engine making a punchy 280 horsepower and 288 pound-feet of torque in the latest iteration, which appears to be what Koenigsegg is driving.

The video opens with Koenigsegg quipping, “Three-cylinder madness in the morning,” which is a good way to start the day when it’s turbocharged and connected to the six-speed manual transmission. The video shows off his commute, a crisp shift from first to second, and the gates to his company as he pulls into work before ending.

It’s wild to think that the mastermind behind some of the world’s fastest and most powerful cars would drive a Toyota to work. But this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Koenigsegg behind the wheel of exemplary Japanese machinery. He famously drove a Mazda MX-5 throughout his college years, which he bought back in 2019 after many years away from ownership.

The GR Yaris is not your typical car from the mainstream Japanese company, but it must be fun if it gets Koenigsegg up every morning.