Devel Motors Beat Bugatti to a V-16. All It Has Now Is a Corvette
The hypercar world is surprisingly crowded when you start to tally up the number of uber-exclusive, insanely powerful machines. The companies that make these vehicles tout their cars’ crazy performance stats, but hypercars are often purchased only as bragging rights. Many spend their lives carefully preserved in climate-controlled storage around the world, perhaps occasionally dusted. Because the appeal of hypercars relies on their statistics, someone is always building or selling The Next Great Thing that promises a quicker 0–60 or 0–100 time, a higher top speed, or more horsepower than you ever thought possible.
Sometimes, the next great record-shattering car is just a cloud of smoke. YouTube channel 337 Speed went on a deep dive into one such car and brought out some interesting information.
Meet the Devel Sixteen, born from the desire to create the most powerful and fastest car in the world. The wildly ambitious project was the idea of the Dubai-based Al Attar family, who at one point owned the tallest hotel in the world. Devel Motors first showed a prototype of the V-16-powered car at the 2013 Dubai International Auto Show, claiming 5000 hp and a top speed of 348 mph. When the company didn’t announce a price or an on-sale date at the reveal (below), the car industry quickly labeled the Devel as vaporware, a vehicle that would likely never see production.
Then, in 2016, Steve Morris Engines in Muskegon, Michigan, posted a video of a wild, quad-turbocharged V-16 engine on its dyno. I remember watching it—I, along with a lot of other people, was shocked to see any part of the Sixteen come to fruition. The massive chunk of billet aluminum that had been whittled so carefully by CNC machines incorporated a lot of Chevrolet LS-engine architecture and actually held up to the wild 5000-horsepower figure claimed by Devel Motors three years before.
So, the engine existed, and it matched the “performance at any price” ethos that its makers had promised. What about the rest of the car?
That’s where the story gets sad again. Neither a production-spec transmission nor tires existed that would put all 5000 horsepower to the road or last until the car’s claimed top speed of 300 mph. Development of the chassis fell behind that of the engine, and even the engine never really got much further than the dyno video posted by Morris. The rolling sculptures that showed what the Sixteen could become started to look, once again, like nothing more than art pieces to draw eyes at car shows.
Then, in 2017, Devel Motors brought another concept to the Dubai show, and said they were accepting orders. This one was ready for production, they said, and they would begin building customer cars in a year or so. In April 2018, suddenly there was a video of a car—not just starting and creeping forward a few feet, but accelerating briskly down a public road, presumably near Dubai.
Something sounded off. Why weren’t they opening the engine cover and showing off the V-16? The April 2018 clip of the car accelerating was clearly doctored. After months of confusion, Devel Motors cleared things up by allowing Youtuber Supercar Blondie to be the first person outside their organization to drive the Sixteen. In the video, we learned that the original plan had expanded to include a V-8 base model, with 2000 hp. Devel planned to offer the V-8 alongside two quad-turbo V-16s, one with 3000 hp and one with 5000. Was the car they allowed Supercar Blondie to drive a V-8 or a V-16? No one said, and no one opened the engine compartment.
Based on photos posted by Devel in May of 2021 showing the Sixteen’s “state of the art” chassis, 337 Speed suspects that the Sixteen was carefully reborn as a modified version of the midengine Corvette. A 2022 video from Supercar Blondie, in which she drove the first customer car, purchased three years prior, confirmed as much. The Youtuber opens the door of the car to reveal an interior that is clearly from a C8, and she even admits as much. The engine, she says as she lifts the cover, is a V-8; the customer lived somewhere that regulations wouldn’t admit a V-16. When she closes the door, while sitting inside the vehicle with the key, the triple-honk emitted by the car will be immediately familiar to anyone who has hung around a Chevrolet dealer. Underneath its carbon-fiber skin, this Devel Sixteen is borrowing heavily from the Corvette.
There is no shortage of companies doing this type of re-body makeover, even with the C8, and that alone is not such a bad thing. What’s less savory, in the case of the Devel Sixteen, is the way the company allowed the original claims about its car to hang in the air while morphing the car into something totally different than it first promised.
Is the Devel Sixteen still just vaporware, or have we simply witnessed the logical result of a young company learning what it takes to produce such a car? We will let you be the judge.
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The next Vector.
Not even next vector, the Vector at least had a few real cars that got made. This thing just screams of either too much ambition and not enough talent to build it or a vaporware money scheme.
My old boss was part of the Vector team. Neil Fedderson. Turbo Tech- Hollywood.
R.I.P.
It’s obviously a scam, but at least it’s targeting dumbass billionaires and not regular people.
Just another hyped up BS going nowhere dream. This car has no class and no one needs an exaggeration of hp in a car. Typical Dubai, whatever is out there ,they just want to always top it in any way shape or form. Please, stick to your buildings and gold palaces…..
I used to respect the Petersen Museum.
Let’s put aside that this piece of fiction is straight cow dookie. EVEN IF such a car was actually built, where in the name of Mario Andretti would anyone be able to drive the car near its full potential???
Well, I served and lived for years in the Kingdom (Saudi Arabia). Miles and miles of empty miles and miles of glass smooth asphalt. In ’82, pushed a friend’s Ferrari 400i to 166mph, held 140mph for almost an hour running down the escarpment from Riyadh to Jeddah. BTW, the GM supplied TH400 automatic transmission and Frigidaire branded A/C performed flawlessly; you could hang meat in that car, the A/C worked so well. 180°F on the gauge all day, idle/140+mph, full A/C. But there are places outside of remote Nevada and Germany where you can stretch a car. Problem is- if you make that mistake and ball it up, will you survive?
Hennessy Venom GT had a Lotus body with a modified Corvette engine and beat Bugatti Veyron super sport ( a W16 car ) at both acceleration and top speed. If the devel sixteen 8 cylinder version has a Corvette engine inside doesn’t mean it’s as fast as a Corvette. It can be even faster than Hennessy Venom GT and near the performance of Hennessy Venom F5 while the 5000 hp V16 version being even faster than Hennessy Venom F5 , Bugatti Bolide, SSC Tuatara, SP Automotiv Chaos, Aurera Automobili SD+ and Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut. But whatever devel sixteen is we are 100% certain that it’s faster than a regular Corvette.
Well it’s not only the engine but the body structure and the key too. The ultimate kit car?
Faster than a regular Corvette? For how long!?
Women say that men who spend Big money on cars, are tiny where it counts. I ride a horse with a large saddle bag. Police around here will let his hang. They won’t allow mine, thus the saddle bag.
If I’m not mistaken devil got exposed for not putting an actual v16 in this thing, so if I’m not, they did not beat Bugatti considering Bugatti actually put a v16 in its car.
The Superstar Blonde chick should be ashamed of herself. With all the crazy hype buzzing around that car, I feel that she got sucked into the sham just for an exclusive, and threw water on it only to disappoint a lot of people who were hoping to get some clarity about it.
Keep in mind the overwhelming majority of those interested would never be able to afford the car- that’s why there was no reason to be forthright to the majority in the first place. This isn’t for Consumer Resorts, Motor Trend or a rating review for JD Powell & Associates. Just got a bunch of low-to middle-income suckers that just got “got.”
It might be as simple as the dream (and the hype) got ahead of reality.
It takes a lot of money to bring a car to fruition.
Ask Cord, Delorean….heck, ask GM.
Penning a body, even building an engine in these days of CAD/CAM is the easy part.
Putting all together…
“Gee, we need tires that don’t exist…think Michelin will make us a set for free?”
“What tooling for taillights is $50,000?”.
” All we need is $5 million for the prototype”
is the hard part.
If it is a scam, at least they’re looking in the right neighborhood.
Using a specified manufacturer’s chassis with custom coachwork is as old as the automotive industry. Back when the purchase of a high end automobile required the purchase of a bare chassis, then consignment to a coach builder, this was the norm. My Grandfather as a young man, was an “expediter” at a Cadillac dealership in the ’30s, leading the purchaser through the various coach builder’s catalogs, choosing the interior materials and colors. That this Devel car ended up being a C8 Corvette with a special body is about the only thing that is important here.
What is interesting here is that they were able to rebody a C8, and I bet that they could do it again, with a different body, for another client with the money and interest. History has given us special body Ferraris, Aston Martins, Maseratis, Bentleys, Delages, Delehays, Hispano Suizas, Pegasos… Essentially every manufacture save Ford with the Model T… So why not a special body on a Corvette?
The rest of the Devel story i’m sure is one of broken promises, unpaid bills and unhappy clients. Speeds of over 330 mph and power outputs in excess of “5000 HP” require development and facilities that don’t exist to anyone but a couple of companies, and the engineering talent is even harder to find, mainly because there is no one with experience with such vehicles outside of Bugatti/Remac and Cosworth.
That Devel could supply a special body Corvette is the real business here. The rest was typical “pie in the sky”. Heck, not even worth reporting, as it was so ridiculous to start with.
Anyway, so long as you are reporting on this stuff, I have a “Classic” narrow body Morgan +8 (narrow body is more streamlined, enabling it to achieve 336 mph with a two stage supercharged, intercooled, radially arrayed 5 valve per cylinder V12 producing over 6500 HP). This machine will be ready for testing in two years, 26 days, while suitable tires, cooling system and transmission are developed to handle the power of the yet to be machined power unit. Of course, it will have CA CARB emissions approval.
Only a V12? Well, the Morgan is not very long… The V12 would be the most efficient use of the available underhood space, especially considering the 4 turbochargers and the crank driven supercharger… anyway, were calling it the MoLSR… Faster than a Hennypenny, Devlish, Easteregg, or Ferroghini. Special introductory price of only $103M USD. You know where to find me for an interview, and look at our full scale mockup.
I believe the car can be inspected in person in a cave under Bruce Wayne’s house. Just knock on the door and ask Alfred “to show you the car”.