General Hospital Tuesday, May 19, 2026 | General Hospital Spoilers

Czinger 21C VMax: A Hypercar Engineered for the Apocalypse The Southern California company’s hypercar represents the future as well as utter madness in automotive form. Gah. For years, we at MotorTrend have longed to get behind the yoke-shaped steering wheel of a Czinger. We even had the company’s founders, father and son Kevin and Lukas Czinger, on The InEVitable podcast back in October 2022. This history is part of why I jumped at the chance to drive a Czinger 21C VMax on a three-day road rally. The goal was to do something different. Yes, there’s a track story to tell—more on that in a bit—and everyone is certainly curious about what a 3D-printed, alien-tech, seven-figure, 1,250-horsepower Southern California-built hypercar is like when pushed to 11/10ths against the bloody edge of the envelope. Those stories have been and will be told. But what is the center-steer, tandem two-seater like on a 500-mile journey? Factory Fresh: A Glimpse into the Future I’ve never had to show my U.S. passport to enter a car factory before, but as you’re about to see, Czinger is just… different. The parent company is Divergent Technologies, which uses iterative artificial intelligence and massive 3D printers to design and produce incredibly light and strong mechanical components. I needed a government-issued ID because Divergent supplies parts to the Department of Defense, or at least to DOD suppliers. While all military hardware was covered during my visit, one piece looked vaguely rocket-shaped. I received a tour from Lukas Czinger, the young CEO of both companies, and what I saw was deeply cool. Specifically, a peek inside one of the massive printers made me feel like I was witnessing the future firsthand, as over a dozen lasers zapped powdered aluminum into automotive parts that resembled bird bones. It’s just wild to behold. Lukas explained that Divergent’s technology reaches what’s known as “Pareto optimality”—the point after which a single gram, either added or subtracted, becomes a negative. For instance, an engineer might specify a part to hold the remote reservoir for the car’s rear suspension damper. There is X amount of space to fit it, and it must withstand forces as strong as Y. Using these targets, the software iterates hundreds of thousands of designs to find the strongest, lightest shape. It’s like evolution on fast-forward. In addition to the DOD, nine automotive OEMs use Divergent as a supplier of 3D-printed parts. Aston Martin (DBR22 Roadster), Bugatti (Tourbillon), and McLaren (W1) are the only three that will publicly admit it, though the Ferrari F80’s control arms look suspicious. Under the Carbon Fiber Czinger builds two versions of what is essentially the same car: the high-downforce, track monster 21C (named after the 21st century) and the wingless, long-tailed VMax. Technically, the VMax is the 21C VMax, but the “21C” designation appears nowhere on the car. For the inaugural Velocity Tour, a 500-mile road rally through Central and Northern California’s wine country, I found myself piloting a silver VMax. I say “piloting” deliberately, as the cabin feels much more like a canopy than a standard vehicle greenhouse. Indeed, Czinger states it’s akin to being inside a jet fighter. While I’ve never piloted a jet fighter, I have ridden shotgun in an Extra 330LT stunt plane, and there is a similarity. Basically, there is glass less than a foot away from both sides of your head. The visibility is as excellent as the process of getting in and out of the car is ridiculous: Sit with your legs facing outward on the massive sill, pull your knees up and spin on your butt as you tuck your feet into the footwell, then slide your head under the roof. One reason the sills are so large is that they are stuffed with batteries. The 21C VMax is a hybrid hypercar, and each sill contains 2.2 kWh of battery power for a total of 4.4 kWh. The car is not a plug-in hybrid; a motor powered by the mid-mounted V-8 engine keeps the pack charged. Those batteries can deliver 500 horsepower to the front axle, which has one motor per wheel. The combustion engine is a Czinger-designed 2.9-liter twin-turbo V-8 rated at 750 hp on California’s 91-octane premium unleaded. Pour 100-octane race fuel into the tank, and the horsepower increases to 850. The small but mighty engine can also run on ethanol and produce even more power, but Czinger has not released those figures; we predict a 10% increase. The gas engine powers the rear wheels via an Xtrac single-clutch automated semi-sequential gearbox. This is similar to the Xtrac seven-speed Pagani uses in the Utopia, but Czinger not only additively 3D prints the transmission case but also employs small 48-volt electric motors to execute shifts more quickly at low speeds. This eliminates the drunken surging feeling that all other automated single-clutch gearboxes exhibit at low speeds. The twin-barrel actuators work as advertised in low-speed situations, as I was thankful to discover. Navigating into gas stations, restaurants, and hotel parking lots felt almost normal. Seriously, bravo. Track Time: The California Gold Rush What never felt normal was the driver sitting behind me for an entire day. As is common practice with certain high-end hypercars (Bugatti and Pagani), Czinger assigned a professional driver (Evan Jacobs) to ensure I didn’t drive the $2.5 million machine off a cliff. Thankfully, later that night, Jacobs assured the Czinger team I was no threat to the car and could drive solo for the rest of the rally. We stopped by Laguna Seca for some parade laps, but for whatever reason, non-Czinger employees aren’t allowed to drive the VMax on racetracks, even at the brutally slow pace the rally participants were restricted to. As I have learned the hard way, even if you can’t drive, at least go along for the ride. I squeezed into the unusual rear seat. The first thing to note is that if you have big calves or feet, the back-seat experience isn’t great. My XXL calves were literally wedged between the carbon-fiber tub and the carbon-fiber seat, and my feet didn’t fit well either. However, the visibility through the side glass is incredible. Again, it reminded me of a stunt plane and was a remarkably novel way to experience riding around a track—something I’ve done over 1,000 times. This was especially true when Jacobs and I convinced the Skip Barber Racing School staff (whose track day we crashed) to let him take the VMax for a couple of “6/10ths” hot laps. The most impressive hot lap I’ve ever experienced was riding shotgun in an Aston Martin Valkyrie LMH race car, during which I could feel the blood pooling in my extremities under braking. The Czinger VMax is now second, and remember, Jacobs didn’t go full tilt. Even at something less than the limit and without the big-downforce rear wing, it was easy to understand how a Czinger 21C pulled off what the brand calls the California Gold Rush. That means it set five production car track records—at Thunder Hill, Sonoma Raceway, Laguna Seca, Willow Springs, and the Thermal Club—in five days and drove from each track to the next. Later, Czinger returned to Laguna Seca not only to beat its own record but to reclaim the throne from the Koenigsegg Jesko Sadair’s Spear. That lap time, a ridiculous 1 minute, 22.30 seconds, is quicker than the fastest MotoAmerica Superbike lap ever recorded at Laguna, a 1:22.56. Czinger claims a vehicle weight of approximately 3,600 pounds, which is pretty light for a 1,250 hp hybrid vehicle. To provide context, the Ferrari SF90 Stradale Asseto Fiorano—the highest-performance version of a three-motor twin-turbo V-8 PHEV that only makes 986 hp—weighs 3,839 pounds. The new Lamborghini Temerario is another three-motor, twin-turbo V-8 (also making less power, but you get the comparison) that pushes past the two-ton mark, coming in at 4,185 chunky pounds. Now’s a good time to mention that the SF90 and Temerario are the two quickest-accelerating gasoline-powered cars MotorTrend has ever tested (the Ferrari for 0–60 mph and the Lambo for the quarter mile). If Czinger’s weight claim holds true, the unorthodox California startup has managed to beat two Italian legends with its first production car. That’s remarkable on its own, but especially noteworthy considering that while Southern California is known for many things, there isn’t a huge pool of supercar building expertise to draw from. In other words, L.A. isn’t exactly Modena. On the Road The route chosen for the rally consisted mostly of true back roads. Tight, winding,