RESIDENT ALIEN

THE CZINGER 21C LOOKS LIKE IT ARRIVED FROM A DISTANT PLANET. INSTEAD, IT COMES FROM CALIFORNIA, WHICH IS KIND OF THE SAME THING.

- JETHRO BOVINGDON

THERE'S NO SONIC BOOM as the Czinger 21C V Max hoovers up Box Canyon Road, southeast of Palm Springs. In fact, the hum and hiss of tires, the whir of electric motors, and the hushed sound of the 2.9-liter twin-turbocharged V-8 at not much more than tick over dissipate into the hot, dry air, so the car passes almost in silence. The shape, smoothed and elongated for minimum drag, is a fascinating mix of alien and organic, and it moves with an energy that seems almost alive. We're in California, but we might as well be on Mars.

So, the shattering noise is missing. However, the 21C is a thunderclap for the car industry and manufacturing in general. It's a revolutionary project born from a heady concoction of hot-rodding mentality, Silicon Valley ambition and optimism, and a force of will and creativity. This car could only come from this place at this precise time. Czinger, this hypercar, and all the technologies it harnesses are creating shock waves that could radically change the fabric of car production forever.

Does that sound dramatic? Perhaps even slightly absurd? A $2 million hypercar with up to 1350 hp and a top speed of 253 mph, capable of exploding from rest to 248 mph and back to zero in 27.1 seconds, is going to change the world? Just 80 customers will take delivery of a 21C in either a high-downforce spec or the slippery V Max configuration. But the moment you walk into the neighboring facilities of Czinger and Divergent (the parent company working on aerospace and military technology projects) in Torrance, California, the potential wide-reaching effects of this knife-edge innovation reveal themselves, one 60- to 120-micron layer at a time. Czinger creates incredible AI-designed components from atomized alloys-literally powdered metaloptimized down to the very last gram.