The 10 Best Cars at This Year’s Quail, a Motorsports Gathering

Named the top hypercar in Robb Report’s 2026 Best of the Best issue, the Czinger 21C is a disruptive innovator in performance and, perhaps more importantly, production. Czinger employs proprietary artificial-intelligence applications along with next-gen construction methods based on additive manufacturing (think 3-D printing) and robotics—a system capable of remapping the industrial landscape across categories.

Naturally, then, we were smitten with the Southern California–based marque’s latest model variant, the 21C Spyder. Equipped with a hybrid power-train configuration comprising a 2.88-liter V-8 and two electric motors that collectively deliver 1,250 hp, the roadster rockets from zero to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds.

“The easy thing would have been take the roof off, don’t spend a lot of time with it, decrease the performance,” says Lukas Czinger, founder and C.E.O. of the eponymous marque. “The hard thing to do is take the roof off, hit the same aero numbers, introduce a new braking system altogether, and [present] a real evolution of the interior.” Only 30 examples will be built, each priced from $2.75 million.

As with Czinger’s 21C, the latest model release from Texas-based Hennessey Special Vehicles is an homage to the SR-71 “Blackbird” spy plane. In the case of Hennessey’s Blackbird model, it pays tribute to the innovative aircraft through ubiquitous aesthetic and functional callouts, while offering drive dynamics grounded more in comfort than the aggression found in the car’s predecessor, Hennessey’s Venom F5.

“We thought, ‘let’s go old school. Let’s go manual, normally aspirated, high revving, kind of more of a GT hypercar, where you’ve got lots of room for luggage, greater levels of comfort,’” founder John Hennessey tells Robb Report. “So again, we wanted to be able to deliver kind of a pure analog driving experience.” In the case of the Blackbird, that drive experience is in a car that is claimed to accelerate from zero to 60 mph in 2.5 seconds and reach a top speed of 220 mph.

As for output from the 6.2-liter, naturally aspirated V-8, “final numbers are still to be determined, but it’ll be 800 hp to 900 hp driven to the rear wheels,” mentioned Nathan Malinick, Hennessey’s design director, during a conversation we had with him earlier this month. The production run will comprise 71 examples, each starting at $2.5 million.

The breathtakingly styled Bugatti Destrier is built on the chassis of the French marque’s Bolide, but without all of that track car’s motorsport-inspired trappings. Instead, the one-off Destrier, commissioned through Bugatti’s Programme Solitaire division, showcases a more refined aesthetic throughout, yet without lacking any of its sibling’s muscle—sharing the Bolide’s 1,578 hp, quad-turbo W16 power plant.

The Destrier’s cockpit is dressed in two types of leather and what Bugatti refers to as “an advanced 3-D knitted textile” that’s interwoven with copper. The Destrier’s visual dynamism is also expressed in its dimensions and stance, the press announcement claiming that the car is “dramatically lower than any other Bugatti model.” 

“If you want to create something beautiful, it is about the proportions . . . the aspect ratio between one dimension to another, and this can be found in the human perception of anything that is beautiful,” Frank Heyl, Bugatti’s design director, explains to Robb Report while on the show lawn. “Decades from now, this thing will be found on some Concours d’Elegance somewhere around the world . . . and it will be relevant.”

Peter Nam, founder of Gunther Werks and the driving force behind the F-26, recently named Robb Report’s Best Restomod of the year, is obviously not one to rest on his laurels. At Quail, he presented a car he dreamed up in April—the GXR-Evo, based on a 993-generation Porsche 911, but with extreme lightweighting measures predicated on its motorsport mission statement.

“It’s essentially the weight of a Mazda Miata, it’s like 2,385 pounds and 455 hp,” Nam tells us. “To put it into perspective, a Porsche 992 GT3 Cup car . . . is 453 pounds heavier than this car, which he goes on to explain “comes with fully exterior carbon fiber, and it’s got our latest and greatest aerodynamics that we learned from the last nine years.

The single-seat cockpit also reflects the GXR-Evo’s track intent with a $9,000 racing seat, a state-of-the-art fire-suppression system, and a cooling setup that connects to the helmet. Also included with purchase is a roughly $80,000 Mysim racing simulator tailored to your vehicle. And plenty of practice is a good call, since  Nam calls the GXR-EVO, which will be limited to 15 examples, the “fastest naturally aspirated car that we’ve ever built.”

The Raging Bull’s current production flagship just got angrier. The hybrid Revuelto SV makes 1,050 hp, making it “the most powerful and fastest production Lamborghini ever built in Sant’Agata Bolognese,” according to the official press release. Naturally, this necessitated some styling cues that call attention to that fact.

“To increase the downforce is always the first goal . . . downforce and aerodynamical balance,” Mitja Borkert, Lamborghini’s design director, tells Robb Report. “Because the car is hybrid, we didn’t want to increase the weight, so that’s why we went for a fixed wing. It’s a more lightweight solution.” Also helping the model variant shed pounds are the racing bucket seats and carbon-fiber door panels.

As for airflow management, Borkert explains: “Every opening has a function, and especially in the front. “Of course, I wanted to find a different design so that you can recognize the character of the car, but in every millimeter, every inclination, we are working together with the aerodynamical engineer to give the perfect shape.”

Gordon Murray, the man who designed McLaren’s seminal F1, has continued to dazzle the automotive cognoscenti throughout subsequent decades, especially with his founding of Gordon Murray Automotive and its Special Vehicles division. Last year at the Quail, Murray revealed the S1 LM, of which only five were made—all commissioned by the same client. There must have been considerable clamor among collectors, because yesterday he introduced the slightly more plentiful S1, of which 64 will be made. And though sharing the same foundation with its sibling, the S1 is more grand tourer than track terror.

“We were inundated with people wanting not just more of those [S1 LM], but wanting a car without the aerodynamic appendages, rather cleaner,” Murray tells Robb Report. “Initially, the idea was, well, ‘we’ll just take the wings off and save ourselves a lot of trouble.’ But when I saw the renders for that, and we started talking to the customers about the car. It didn’t really work as well as I thought it would,” he adds. “So . . . apart from the roof, every single panel is new. We went right back to page one. But, actually, I think the result is better for that, because it’s not just an S1 LM, it’s a complete fresh design.”

See Also

This 1963 Ferrari Racer Could Fetch $20 Million at Auction

Another ode to analog, the S1 has a manual gearbox to manage the 4.2-liter naturally aspirated V-12’s 680 hp. Comparing it to the engine in the S1 LM, Murray says that “it produces, of course, proportionally more torque, low-down torque, which suits the kind of touring character we wanted.”

“This is 10 years in the making now. This is the fourth iteration of the car, and we are finally going to put our pens down, and we’re delivering them,” Thomas Yates, assured Robb Report on the show lawn. The managing director and cofounder of McMurtry Automotive was referring to the performance juggernaut that is the Spéirling Pure. This is the production version of the car that broke the Hillclimb record at the Goodwood Festival of Speed and, with its innovative fan system, generates enough downforce from zero mph to operate upside down.

The all-electric track star has 1,000 hp and crushes zero to 60 mph in 1.5 seconds. “It’s so fast that it doesn’t matter . . . it just doesn’t need to be faster,” says Yates. “We’ve done a 95 percent redesign compared to the previous prototype, so it’s almost all new.” This decade long journey for Yates and his team has been driven by his desire to provide owners of this physics-defying hypercar with, as he puts it, “a driving experience that you can experience nowhere else.

Since the advent of aircraft, car designers and engineers have used aeronautical influences to elevate their game, some with more success than others. One of the earliest to do so was Spyker, established before the turn of last century, then shuttered, then resurrected 26 years ago by Victor Muller. His vision has largely flown under the radar when it comes to mainstream awareness, but once you see a contemporary Spyker model, it becomes a lasting memory. Attendees of this year’s Quail were given just such a moment with the unveiling of the 800 hp Spyker C8 Preliator XXV Coupé, limited to 25 examples.

“I am the happiest man on the planet, being here today,” says Muller as he stands next to his show car. “We made 255 cars until now, and this car, of course, everything is new about it. New chassis—aluminum spaceframe—new body handmade in England, new engine . . . and it’s got a true manual gearbox. If you screw up, your grinding gears, if you really screw up, you blow your engine up—that’s the way engaged driving should be in our thinking.” As for the car’s overall aesthetic, it flies beautifully in the face of convention.

In 2024, Eccentrica founder Emanuel Colombini and his team, including former Lamborghini C.T.O. Maurizio Reggiani, unveiled a Diablo restomod that gave the aging Raging Bull a masterful makeover. Two years later, Colombini and company returned to Quail with a stunning open-top translation—the Eccentrica V12 Roadster. The model’s 5.7-liter naturally aspirated V-12—making 550 hp and 442 ft lbs of torque—is mated to a six-speed manual transmission. It’s a power-train combo that allows this roofless wonder, of which only 19 examples will be produced, to reach 208 mph.

“You feel the air in the front, and that kind of real connection with road and air is something that we really wanted to create,” notes Eccentrica board member Andrea Colombo. “That’s why the windshield is very short, shorter than the Diablo, and this is why also we work to reinforce the chassis even more than what we’ve done on the coupe, just to be able to give handling that really makes yourself connected to the road.”

While much of Quail is about the numerous model debuts from many of the world’s finest automakers, there’s also a proper concours that runs concurrently. This year, a Prancing Horse that takes provenance to redline was named Best of Show, an occurrence not that uncommon for cars owned by esteemed collector Bruce Meyer.

In this case, his winning entry was a 1957 Ferrari Testarossa that, according to the Quail’s entry description of it, was “one of only two built by the factory with a Tipo 625 Grand Prix racing engine,” a four-cylinder mill with 2.5 liters of displacement. It goes on to relate how the original owner, John von Neuman, campaigned it extensively, with the car finishing first on a regular basis. In 1958, it was given a larger 250 Testarossa V-12 power plant. The vehicle’s pearlescent sheen alone is worthy of a moment in the sun, and gives the car a timelessness on par with that of its indefatigable owner.