The Stranger Things vibe is too overt for it to be a coincidence. Watch the 60-second teaser video for the Czinger 21C and you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled into Hawkins, Indiana.
Not that there’s anything remotely retro about the 21C. As the name suggests, this is a hypercar for the 21st century. It’s also built in Los Angeles, which is around 2,000 miles from the Scarcourt Mall. As for its premiere, the Czinger will be fully revealed at the Geneva Motor Show in March.
For the benefit of any doubt, Czinger is pronounced with a silent ‘c’, so it’s the first supercar to sound like a chicken burger at KFC. It’s also named after the founder and CEO Kevin Czinger, the co-founder of Coda Automotive. More on the CEO in a moment. What do we know about the car?
In truth, not a lot. The company has released a selection of images and an atmospheric video, but specs and details are as thin on the ground as a healthy snack at Scoops Ahoy.
It represents a ‘paradigm shift in the way vehicles are designed, developed, engineered and manufactured’, says the short press release. It’s a reference to the 3D printing techniques showcased by Divergent 3D, the company Kevin Czinger founded three years ago.
Previously, Czinger has said the manufacturing process for every mainstream car “is fundamentally broken”. In an interview with Road & Track, Czinger said: “In a car company, they’re in all of their silos. They’re not trying to work with people outside or develop new commercial equipment. They’re looking at what technologies fit into and improve their existing production capability.
”We’re looking to combine computing power, science, and additive manufacturing into one system.”
To this end, Czinger enlisted the help of senior execs from Apple, Boeing, Google, Koenigsegg and SpaceX, while Dave O’Connell, formerly of Mitsubishi, was brought in to work on the design.
Czinger 21C: ‘Super-cool car’
You might recall the Divergent Blade – a 700hp, 3D-printed supercar that was given the Jay Leno treatment in 2017. It represents Czinger’s “fantasy of what a super-cool car would look like”, one in which the driver sits in the middle position, with a passenger sat behind. A kind of 3D-printed two-person bobsled on four wheels, if you like.
Czinger also references the Lola T70, and the influence of the Can-Am racer is clear to see. The CEO was raised in Cleveland, Ohio and he built hotrods with his brothers.
The Divergent Blade lineage in the Czinger 21C is obvious, but even from the video, it’s clear that the company has moved on. The images hint of a car that’s more production-ready, with styling that’s part-Lola, part-McLaren and part-Batmobile.
A low weight is guaranteed. The Blade tipped the scales at just 630kg, which gave it a power-to-weight ratio of 1,142.8hp per tonne. It used a 2.4-litre engine from the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X. The company has confirmed the use of a hybrid powertrain developed in-house for the 21C, but while the output is unclear, the video suggests a redline of 10,000rpm.
There’s swathes of carbon-fibre, a full length LED light strip at the rear, a rear-view camera, a large rear wing, a central exhaust, stacked LED headlights and a central driving position.
More information will almost certainly be released ahead of the Czinger 21C’s global debut at the Geneva Motor Show. Will the full details be leaked or revealed ahead of 3 March? Stranger things have happened…
