CZING AND A PRAYER

You've heard the name, you've seen the lap records tumble, now Californian startup Czinger's 3D printed 21C hypercar is ready for its final examination

- JETHRO BOVINGDON

Too good to be true. That was my first thought when I first met Kevin and Lukas Czinger and heard about their vision for a new way to design and produce high quality, high performance components and whole vehicle concepts. A closed loop, AI driven approach that eliminates expensive tooling costs, allows rapid iteration and creates perfectly optimised, lightweight components through 3D printing.

Even as I held the part organic, part alien suspension structures in my hands and watched subframes emerge from a box of atomised aluminium alloys, the scale and scope of the ambition and potential was too much for my brain still stuck in the old ways to fully comprehend and accept. That was five years ago.

In 2024 I visited Czinger and sister company Divergent once again. The facilities in Irvine, California had grown and Kevin's incredible belief, almost zeal, in the heavily patented design and production process was fully borne out. The Divergent facility was simultaneously producing parts for Bugatti, Aston Martin, McLaren, SpaceX and the military. Next door at Czinger the 21C was entering the final phase of development, too. Divergent has invested around $1 billion in its visionary Divergent Adaptive Production System and the Czinger 21C is intended as a lap record destroyer to showcase the full extent of its powers. Today, it's time to drive.

On a cool, hazy morning at Sonoma Raceway, the 21C looks almost as alien as the sprawling weblike structures beneath its carbon fibre bodywork. It's wide and incredibly low but with an SR-71 Blackbird inspired '1+1' seating arrangement, the passenger cell is slim and has an organic, teardrop shape. Of course, aside from Top Gun vibes and the perfection of a central driving position, the configuration is also fantastic for aero optimisation. And the 21C has a lot of aero. Czinger claims 1,200kg of downforce at 100mph and 2,552kg at 200mph.