Thule's $20k Gear Box

Those crazy Swedes! This week, two Sweden-based companies, Thule AB and Koenigsegg Automotive, have announced a partnership to produce a roof-top gear box designed for speeds up to 186mph. The Thule Lightning box is made of pure carbon fiber and it attaches to the top of the Koenigsegg Agera R, a “hyper sports car” that can go zero-to-60mph in 2.9 seconds.

It is “the fastest combination of a commercial car and roof box on the market,” Thule touts. (Well, yeah!) The Thule box product, called the Thule Lightning, debuted this week at the Geneva Motor Show. The gear box was made only for the Koenigsegg Agera R model, and it comes integrated into a removable roof panel. In other words, you cannot swap out the carbon-fiber Thule box for use on a Subaru on days when you’re feeling not so fast.

Smells like a publicity stunt, I know. But the CEO of Koenigsegg, Christian von Koenigsegg, cites a need for more luggage capacity in these kind of cars. ”We have for a long time dreamed about making our extreme cars more practical without sacrificing the feel and the performance of the vehicle,” he said.

The Thule Lightning package — which (somewhat inexplicably) also comes with a pair of custom-made skis — offers the Koenigsegg contingent the capacity to haul skis or random gear with a cited luggage space of about 420 liters in the Thule box. The price for the extra space? The whole package costs about $20,000. I guess that’s chump change if you’re the kind of person who can afford this car. The Koenigsegg Agera R, a limited-production model, purportedly goes at more than $1million USD.

—Stephen Regenold