The Devel Sixteen has always seemed like an ambitious dream—a Dubai-based automotive startup promising to build a 300-mph supercar with a 500o-horsepower, quad-turbo V16 engine. Now, four years after the company first announced its plans, we may actually get to see the car at the Dubai Motor Show next week.
To catch you up: The Devel Sixteen is a so-far-hypothetical supercar built around an outrageous V16 engine. Video of this engine maxing out a dyno at 4000-plus horsepower first circulated in 2015. Not long after that, I visited Steve Morris Engines, the Michigan speed shop that designed and built the 12.3-liter, quad-turbo engine seen in those YouTube videos. The engine is real; the car has yet to be seen.
Today, Devel announced that it is partnering with Manifattura Automobili Torino, an Italian motorsports and manufacturing firm, to build the Sixteen. MAT is the company behind Jim Glickenhaus's street-and-racetrack SCG 003 carbon-fiber supercar, as well as the recently-debuted Apollo Intensa Emozione.
MAT certainly has the expertise necessary to make the Devel a reality. And in order to meet the Dubai supercar's claims, they'll need it: The car is promised to surpass 500 km/h (310 mph), while still performing as "an easy daily driver with all the refinements expected in this kind of vehicle." With more than 5000 horsepower, Devel describes its car as having "the power of ten supercars," an appropriately comic-book-like explanation of such an ambitious vehicle.
