The Devel Sixteen is one of those cars that seems destined to be forever vaporware.
Dubai-based Devel announced to the world as early as 2013 that it plans to produce the wildly styled hypercar with a 12.3-liter quad-turbocharged V-16 but alas, here we are, eight years later, and Devel’s promise of a Bugatti-toppling machine has yet to come to fruition.
Reminding us that the project isn’t dead, Motor1 was first to notice that Devel in July posted a video to its YouTube page showing a Sixteen prototype undergoing track testing in Italy, albeit minus any turbos, according to the company. A video from June shows a scale model undergoing aerodynamic testing in Pininfarina’s wind tunnel.
These are good signs as the last we heard, the project had hit some major hurdles. A scathing report by Road & Track in 2018 pegged the Sixteen as nearly dead in the water. The company reportedly lost its initial partner, Manufattura Automobili Torino (MAT), before any real development was done. MAT is the same company that helped Glickenhaus with its 003 and Apollo with its Intensa Emozione.
Devel Sixteen
Other quirks reportedly plagued the hypercar, such as the V-16’s tendency to overheat in normal driving scenarios. Steve Morris Engines, the company presumably developing the V-16, posted a video in 2017 showing the unit on an engine dyno. The claimed peak output was a staggering 5,007 hp and somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,900 lb-ft of torque.
Engineers also reportedly had difficulty figuring out how to keep the car on the ground, as it showed a penchant for taking flight at high speed. With the goal of reaching more than 300 mph, that’s not a good problem to have.
Is the latest video proof that the Devel Sixteen is real? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Incredibly, Devel in 2018 showed off a second model, a six-wheeled SUV that can accelerate quicker than a sports car. No word on whether development of this model is also happening.