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Czinger 21C VMax: Pure Automotive Madness The Southern California company’s hypercar represents the future as well as utter madness in automotive form. Gah. Jonny Lieberman Mar 04, 2026 Photos by Mikey Noga For years, MotorTrend has yearned to experience the sensation of piloting a Czinger. We had the founders—Kevin and Lukas Czinger—on The InEVitable podcast back in October 2022, which is part of why I seized the opportunity to drive a Czinger 21C VMax on a three-day road rally. The goal was to step outside the usual narrative. Yes, there’s a track story to be told (more on that shortly), and everyone is eager to understand what a 3D-printed, alien-tech, seven-figure, 1,250-horsepower hypercar built in Southern California feels like when pushed to the absolute limit. These experiences will be documented, but the more compelling question remains: What is a center-steer, tandem two-seater like during a 500-mile journey? Factory Fresh I’ve never had to show my U.S. passport to enter a car factory before, but as you’ll soon discover, Czinger is fundamentally different. The parent company, Divergent Technologies, leverages iterative artificial intelligence and massive 3D printers to design and produce incredibly light and strong mechanical components. Identification was required because Divergent supplies parts to the Department of Defense, or at least to DOD suppliers. During my visit, all military hardware was kept covered, though one piece bore a resemblance to a rocket. Lukas Czinger, the young CEO of both companies, provided the tour, and it was truly mind-blowing. Peeking inside one of the immense printers made me feel as though I had glimpsed the future, with more than a dozen lasers fusing powdered aluminum into automotive parts that resembled bird bones. It’s an astonishing sight. Lukas explained that Divergent’s technology reaches the “Pareto optimal”—the point beyond which a single gram, either added or subtracted, represents a loss. For example, an engineer might call for a part to hold the remote reservoir for the car’s rear suspension damper. The software uses the spatial constraints and required force resistance to generate hundreds of thousands of designs, eventually identifying the strongest and lightest configuration—a process akin to evolution accelerated at warp speed. Besides the DOD, nine automotive OEMs utilize Divergent for 3D-printed parts. Aston Martin (DBR22 Roadster), Bugatti (Tourbillon), and McLaren (W1) publicly acknowledge using the technology, though the control arms on the Ferrari F80 certainly appear to be 3D-printed suspects. Under the Carbon Fiber Czinger produces two versions of what is essentially the same car: 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” designation does not appear on the car itself. For the inaugural Velocity Tour, a 500-mile road rally through Northern and Central 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 conventional car’s roof. Indeed, Czinger likens the experience to being inside a fighter jet. While I’ve never flown a fighter, I have experienced a ride in an Extra 330LT stunt plane, and the similarities are striking. Essentially, there is glass less than a foot away from both sides of your head. The visibility is excellent, but the process of entering and exiting the car is frankly ridiculous: Sit with your legs facing out on the massive sill, pull your knees up and swivel your body as you tuck your feet into the footwell, then slide your head under the roof. One reason the sills are so large is because they house the 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. These batteries can deliver 500 horsepower to the front axle, which features one motor per wheel. The combustion engine is a Czinger-designed 2.9-liter twin-turbo V-8 producing 750 horsepower on California’s standard 91-octane premium unleaded. Switch to 100-octane race fuel, and the horsepower jumps to 850. The small but powerful engine can also run on ethanol, potentially unlocking even more power, though Czinger has yet to release these figures. We anticipate a 10% increase. The gasoline engine drives the rear wheels through an Xtrac single-clutch automated semi-sequential gearbox. This unit is similar to the Xtrac seven-speed transmission used in the Pagani Utopia, but Czinger not only 3D-prints the transmission case but also employs small 48-volt electric motors to facilitate quicker shifts at lower speeds. This eliminates the characteristic lurch and surging that plague other automated single-clutch transmissions at low speeds. The twin-barrel actuators performed exactly as advertised in low-speed situations, a fact I was extremely grateful to discover. Navigating gas stations, restaurants, and hotel parking lots felt almost ordinary. Seriously, bravo to the engineering team. Track Time What never felt ordinary was the gentleman sitting behind me for an entire day. As is standard practice with certain high-end hypercars (Bugatti and Pagani), Czinger placed a professional driver (Evan Jacobs) in the car to ensure I didn’t drive the $2,500,000 machine off a cliff. Thankfully, later that evening, Jacobs assured the Czinger team that I posed no threat to the car and was permitted to drive solo for the remainder of the rally. We stopped by Laguna Seca for some parade laps, but for reasons unknown, non-Czinger employees are prohibited from driving the VMax on racetracks, even at the painfully slow pace permitted during the rally. As I have learned the hard way, even if you can’t drive, always take the ride. I squeezed into the unusual rear seat. The first thing to note is that if you have large calves or feet, the back-seat experience is less than ideal. My XXL calves were literally wedged between the carbon-fiber tub and the carbon-fiber seat, and my feet didn’t fit comfortably either. However, the visibility through the side windows is incredible. Again, it reminded me of a stunt plane and was a notably novel way to experience a track day—an activity I’ve done more than 1,000 times. This was especially true when Jacobs and I convinced the Skip Barber Racing School staff (whose track day we had crashed) to allow him to take the VMax for a couple of “6/10ths” hot laps. The most impressive hot lap I’ve ever experienced was in the passenger seat of an Aston Martin Valkyrie LMH race car, during which I could feel the blood pooling in my extremities under heavy braking. The Czinger VMax now holds the second spot, and remember, Jacobs didn’t go full tilt. Even at a pace well below the limit and without the massive downforce from the rear wing, it was easy to understand how a Czinger 21C achieved what the brand calls the California Gold Rush. This involved setting five production car track records—at Thunder Hill, Sonoma Raceway, Laguna Seca, Willow Springs, and the Thermal Club—in five days, driving from each track to the next. Later, Czinger returned to Laguna Seca to not only beat its own record but to reclaim the throne from a track-special Koenigsegg Jesko Sadair’s Spear. That lap time, a blistering 1:22.30, is quicker than the fastest MotoAmerica Superbike lap ever recorded at Laguna, which stands at 1:22.56. Czinger claims a vehicle weight of approximately 3,600 pounds, which is remarkably light for a 1,250-horsepower hybrid hypercar. For context, the Ferrari SF90 Stradale Asseto Fiorano—the highest-performance version of a three-motor twin-turbo V-8 plug-in hybrid, making less power at 986 hp—weighs 3,839 pounds. The new Lamborghini Temerario is another three-motor, twin-turbo V-8 (producing less power, but the comparison holds) that surpasses the two-ton mark, clocking in at a hefty 4,185 pounds. It’s worth noting here that the SF90 and 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 claims prove true, the unconventional California startup has managed to outpace two Italian legends right out of the gate. That achievement is remarkable on its own, but even more impressive considering that while Southern California is known for many things, it doesn’t have a deep wellspring of supercar manufacturing expertise. In other words, L.A. isn’t exactly Modena. On the Road The route selected for the rally consisted primarily of true back roads. Narrow, winding, and paved with rough, weathered asphalt—not the kind of pavement that typically features in hypercar dream