THE DEVEL SIXTEEN HAS FINALLY ARRIVED, BUT IT’S MISSING 8 PISTONS.
There are loads of cars out there that have weird origin stories and years’ worth of development before being released, but some just make it an agonising weight. This car, one of the first to be called a hypercar, has been surrounded by controversy since it was announced a whopping 16 years ago. There’s probably a list of reasons why, but first and foremost in any automotive enthusiast’s mind would have to be the fact that even before the car was made in a physical form, it was touted as having an unbelievable 5 000 hp available from a monstrous V16 - hence the ‘sixteen’ part of the car’s name. A few examples of the car were ‘spotted’ and internet sleuths quickly tore the pics apart to analyze if what was seen matched the company’s claims. It didn’t. The Devel Sixteen became the lesser-spotted hypercar.
So now a full sixteen years later - quite apt for the name - the Devel Sixteen has finally been seen in action, tearing up a racetrack during some proper testing. In the short video clip, the car certainly has the looks that were promised, even with the design being almost old enough to buy a gun in the States. The handling seems ok too, but the video is quite brief, suspiciously so actually. That suspicion is purely due to the way things can be filmed and edited these days, which is only a thought because of the dubious history of the car’s claims. What is immediately 100% clear to absolutely anyone watching that has any experience with cars is that there is nowhere near 5 000 hp coming out of that engine. It looks like proper measures were taken to hide the dashboard or any other interior bits too, which begs the question as to why?
We’re guessing here at SXdrv, and it can be classed as an educated guess, is that the car doesn’t have all those many, many horses lurking in the engine bay. This guess isn’t based on the performance of the car, it isn’t based on the handling seen, in fact, it isn’t based on anything seen in the video - it’s based on the title of the video. Yeah, the title actually seems to confirm the Devel Sixteen is powered by a V8. That’s half of what was promised, and we’re gonna go out on a limb here and also say that we’re pretty sure there isn’t 2 500 hp on tap either. Maybe some clever PR will spin the ‘sixteen’ part as the car’s name being derived from taking 16 years to develop, but that’s not too likely.
Take a look at the YouTube video showing the all-new sixteen-year-old Devel Sixteen Hypercar being tested, albeit not at race pace or with all sixteen cylinders firing, on track in Italy: Devel Sixteen V8 production version in action on track | Devel Sixteen
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