A street-legal car on street-legal tires, the wild Czinger 21C lays down legit race car performance in the hands of a pro.
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We test hundreds of cars every year , but it’s not every day we connect our data collection gear to a multi-million-dollar hypercar, let alone while flat-out lapping a legit racetrack. So anticipation was high to find out what the 1,250-hp, $2.4-million Czinger 21C could do when driven to its limits.
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We tested not one but two Czingers to capture a complete picture of what this California-built road jet is capable of. A silver, wingless, long-tail 21C VMax posted the acceleration times and braking distances on an airport runway while a standard 21C with its high-downforce aero kit and finished in green carbon fiber laid down a record-setting lap at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway.
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How Quick Is America’s $2.4-Million Hypercar?
The 21C’s carbon-fiber body is shrink-wrapped around aluminum suspension arms that have been AI optimized and 3D-printed in organic, bonelike shapes. This advanced engineering turned into eye candy is propelled by a pair of 268-hp electric motors yanking at the front wheels while a twin-turbo 2.9-liter V-8 pushes from behind the driver with 750 horsepower. Total output matches the 1,250 hp of the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1X that sells for about one-tenth as much.
We’re not sure how you’d put a price on the Czinger’s theatrics, but the acceleration numbers land exactly where we expected them to, near the tippy-top of our all-time leaderboard. The VMax rips off the line and hits 60 mph in 2.0 seconds. You need more time to read this sentence than it takes for the carbon-fiber wonder to clear 100 mph (4.2 seconds). The quarter-mile disappears in 9.2 seconds.
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As the speeds get wild, so does the experience. Even without the standard car’s big wing, downforce squeezes the VMax’s ground clearance from 2.6 inches when sitting still down to nothing. Without carpeting or a headliner let alone actual sound insulation to dampen the sound, you’re keenly aware that the Czinger’s belly is scraping the ground as you missile past the half-mile marker in 14.4 seconds. In most new cars, that’d be a respectable time to cover half the distance.
Let’s put that into context. Only the Lucid Air Sapphire and the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT have ever hit 60 mph quicker in our testing. The Czinger then passes the Porsche to be the second-quickest car we’ve ever tested through the quarter mile. It sits ahead of a motley crew of very, very fast cars: the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1X, the Tesla Model S Plaid , the Lamborghini Temerario , and the Ferrari SF90 Stradale Assetto Fiorano .