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The Czinger 21C VMax: When Futurism Meets Utter Madness For years, the team at MotorTrend has been eyeing the Czinger. We had the chance to sit down with the founders, Kevin and Lukas Czinger, on The InEVitable podcast back in October 2022, which only amplified my excitement when I got the call to drive a Czinger 21C VMax on a three-day road rally. Our plan was to do something different. Yes, there’s a track story to tell (more on that in a bit), and everyone is dying to know what it feels like to hammer a 3D-printed, alien-tech, seven-figure, 1,250-horsepower hypercar from Southern California at the absolute edge of performance. These stories have been told and will continue to be told. But what about the experience of piloting a center-steer, tandem two-seater on a 500-mile trek? Factory Fresh I’ve never had to show my U.S. passport to enter a car factory before, but as you’ll soon see, Czinger is… different. The parent company is Divergent Technologies, and they use iterative artificial intelligence and massive 3D printers to design and manufacture incredibly lightweight and strong mechanical components. I needed my government ID because Divergent supplies parts to the Department of Defense, or at least to DoD suppliers. All the military hardware was covered during my visit, though one item did resemble the shape of a rocket. I was given a tour by Lukas Czinger, the young CEO of both companies, and what I witnessed was nothing short of breathtaking. Seeing inside one of the immense printers felt like a glimpse into the future as dozens of lasers fused powdered aluminum into automotive parts that resembled bird bones. It was a genuinely wild sight. Lukas explained that Divergent’s technology reaches “Pareto optimal,” the point where every gram, added or subtracted, becomes a negative. For example, an engineer might request a part to hold the remote reservoir for the car’s rear suspension. There is a specific amount of space to fit it, and it must withstand forces of magnitude Y. Using that target, the software iterates hundreds of thousands of designs until it finds the strongest, lightest shape. It’s like the evolutionary process on fast-forward. Aside from 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 ones willing to publicly admit it, although the Ferrari F80’s control arms look highly suspicious. Under the Carbon Fiber Czinger builds two versions of essentially the same car. There’s the high-downforce, track-focused 21C (named after the 21st century) and the wingless, long-tailed VMax. Technically, the latter is the 21C VMax, but the “21C” doesn’t appear anywhere on the car itself. 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” intentionally because the cabin feels much more like a canopy than a standard car’s greenhouse. In fact, Czinger claims it’s like being in a jet fighter. While I haven’t personally flown one, I did ride in an Extra 330LT stunt plane, and there’s a definite similarity. Essentially, there’s glass less than a foot away from both sides of your head. The visibility is outstanding, but the process of getting in and out of the car is truly ridiculous: Sit with your legs facing outwards on the massive sill, pull your knees up, spin on your butt, and tuck your feet into the footwell, then slide your head under the roof. One reason the sills are so wide is that they’re stuffed with batteries. The 21C VMax is a hybrid hypercar, and each sill contains 2.2 kWh of battery power (totaling 4.4 kWh). The car is not a plug-in hybrid; a motor powered by the mid-mounted V-8 engine keeps the battery 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 producing 750 hp on California’s subpar 91-octane premium unleaded. Dump 100-octane race fuel into the tank, and the horsepower jumps to 850. The small but mighty engine can also run on ethanol, producing even more power, though Czinger hasn’t released those figures yet; we predict a 10 percent 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 that Pagani uses on the Utopia, but Czinger not only 3D prints the transmission case but also uses small 48-volt electric motors to execute shifts more quickly at lower speeds. This eliminates the lurching, surging feeling that plagues all other automated single-clutch gearboxes at low speeds. The dual-barrel actuators work exactly as advertised in low-speed scenarios, which I was thankful to discover. Pulling into gas stations, restaurants, and hotel parking lots felt almost normal. Seriously, bravo. Track Time What never felt normal was the guy sitting behind me for the entire day. As is common practice with high-end hypercars (like those from Bugatti and Pagani), Czinger positioned a professional driver (Evan Jacobs) in the car 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 they let me drive solo for the remainder of the rally. We stopped by Laguna Seca for some parade laps, but for whatever reason, non-Czinger employees are prohibited from driving the VMax on racetracks, even at the brutally slow pace required by the rally participants. As I’ve learned the hard way, even if you can’t drive, you should at least take the ride. I scrambled into the bizarre rear seat. The first thing to note is that if you have big calves or feet, the rear 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. Once again, it reminded me of a stunt plane and was a notably 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 exhilarating 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 hard braking. The Czinger VMax is now a close second, and remember, Jacobs wasn’t pushing the car to its limit. Even at something less than full speed and without the aggressive rear wing, it was easy to understand how a Czinger 21C managed what the brand calls the California Gold Rush. That means it set five production car track records in five days—at Thunder Hill, Sonoma Raceway, Laguna Seca, Willow Springs, and The Thermal Club—and drove from each track to the next. Later, Czinger returned to Laguna Seca to not only beat its own record but to reclaim the title from the track-special Koenigsegg Jesko Sadair’s Spear. That lap time, a stunning 1 minute, 22.30 seconds, is faster than the quickest MotoAmerica Superbike lap ever recorded at Laguna, which stands at 1:22.56. Czinger claims a curb weight of approximately 3,600 pounds, which is pretty light for a 1,250-hp hybrid vehicle. To put that in context, the Ferrari SF90 Stradale Asseto Fiorano—the highest-performance version of a three-motor, twin-turbo V-8 PHEV with only 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, weighing in at a chunky 4,185 pounds. Now is a good time to mention that the SF90 and the Temerario are the two quickest 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 proves true, the unconventional Southern California startup has managed to outpace 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 deep pool of supercar-building expertise. In other words, L.A. is not exactly Modena. On the Road The route chosen for the rally was mostly composed of genuine back roads. Tight, winding, and lousy, weather-beaten asphalt—not exactly the ideal kind of surface for hypercar dream trips. Plus, there was a lot of following the pack, navigating to lunch