You’ve probably never heard of Czinger Vehicles. However, once you see one of his cars, you’re unlikely to forget it.
The Los Angeles-based maker of high-performance and uniquely designed cars was born just a few years ago in 2019, founded by CEO Kevin Zinger, his brother Lucas Zinger and design chief Dave O’Connell. It sells vehicles in thin air with a starting price of US$2 million. Of course, you can climb up from there pretty quickly. Czinger is at the very top of the food chain, competing with the likes of Sweden’s Koenigsegg Jesko and France’s Bugatti.
It only makes 80 cars a year and just two models (so far), and every car sold is practically a one-off, like a work of art, O’Connell says. Let’s just say O’Connell is an artist who happens to work with metal. You can call it performance art, but it is performance art. Currently, the brand’s models are the 21C and 21C V Max. Perhaps one of the most interesting engineering facts is that Czinger makes extensive use of “additive manufacturing,” or a 3-D printing system, to make many of its parts, which helps streamline manufacturing processes. That and only 80 cars a year.
Every component is designed using AI, optimized for weight and performance, and finished by hand. The carbon fiber, aluminum and titanium body weighs just 1,250kg, allowing the 21C to accelerate from zero to 60mph in just 1.9 seconds. For now, we’ll concentrate on the design and Dave O’Connell.
PENTA: Give us a description of your background and how it influenced you to become a car designer.
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Dave O’Connell: I grew up here in Southern California, the center of the car driving world. My oldest sister was kind of a funky, hippie, surfer girl, and she attended Art Center College, which introduced me to the arts. And my older brother was a gearhead and he built and raced hotrods, mostly Camaros and Chevelles. I sat in the garage while he tore apart engines, Hot Rod magazine in one hand and a sketch pad in the other. I’ve always liked to draw things.
What about schools and previous car employers?
In high school I realized I was never going to be a math major because I was always drawing cars instead of paying attention. But I had a great art teacher who told me I might want to consider attending Art Center College in Pasadena. I did a four-year program there and it was like, OK, this is where destiny will take me. Long story short, I spent about three and a half years working for Peugeot in Europe and then joined Mitsubishi Motors for about 25 years when they first started in the US in the mid-1980s. I then started my own consulting company where I was doing a lot of work for a lot of people around town when I met Kevin Zinger in 2015.
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What are your artistic influences, such as painting styles or other car designs?
I really like the clean look of the Porsche. There is a purity to it. It’s bold, simple, clear, with strong execution. This is very well thought out and polished. When you first see one of these cars, it’s very clear and looks good. There aren’t many extras or things that shouldn’t be there. I also liked the E-type Jaguar for many of the same reasons.
Prefer designing cars or driving them?
I’m more of a designer than a driver. I’ve always looked at cars as works of art. It’s all about stance, proportions, shape, what captivates you, what draws you visually, the way cars and concepts can be visually created. When I walk into our studio in Torrance, California, full of designers and they have all the sketches on the walls. As a boss, where I manage the designers and the things that people create, it’s great. Now we have seven in the studio.
What models are there now and what is coming in the future?
We have one model with two variants, the 21C, which is a high down force type, and the 21C V Max, a high speed, low drag version. Design ideas come from everywhere. Southern California has such a kaleidoscope of things to see: sailboats, classic cars, paintings at the Getty Museum. You know, nobody ever wants to wear sand to the beach, and with this brand, we never do.
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A new model concept, the Hyper GT, will add a third model to the mix for Czinger’s 15 dealerships.
What design changes do you see coming in the future of the industry and Czinger itself?
The timing is amazing because there are so many new technologies that can enable change to happen. We do things with additive manufacturing on the chassis, which allows us to design vehicles that are lighter and stronger, and you can get them into production faster because you don’t have all the tooling for the chassis and the platform. It allows you to change and have variables in that platform if you want to make a shorter or longer wheelbase car, things like that. The chassis and many of the suspension components on the 21C and V Max are made with our digital manufacturing system. Our cars are made to order. Customers can configure the car as they wish. We have a palette of materials and colors. We have 80 cars a year and we’re expanding, but it’s a lot one at a time.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
