(whooshing)
(car engine revving)
(tape rewinds)
(car engine revving)
- This is the Devel Sixteen, and for years,
we've been seeing this supercar in pictures,
on blogs, Instagram, Facebook,
we've all heard the specs.
5,000 horsepower, 1.8 seconds zero to 60 time,
capable of 350 miles per hour.
We've even seen a few videos of it rolling around.
(car engine revving)
Sounds pretty awesome, right?
Well, if you ask me,
it seems a little too awesome.
(whooshing) (gun cocking)
It's pretty suss that we've never seen this car
actually do a pull.
Is this car real, or is the Devel Sixteen
just smoke and mirrors?
What I found out is actually (beep) bananas.
(upbeat theme music)
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Now let's jump back to the show,
you get it?
Like, jump, nevermind.
(light beeping)
I want to start off this video by saying that I'm a big fan
of the idea behind this car.
I mean, how can you not smile when you hear 12.3 liter,
quad-turbocharged, V16, 5,000 horsepower,
350 miles per hour?
If those numbers don't get you excited, you're a robot.
The thing is, from all our research,
everything that's come out about this car is theoretical.
We've yet to see what this supposed supercar,
nay, hypercar is capable of doing in a real life test.
And that's disappointing
because it can honestly be really, really cool.
So why is it that eight years after this car was announced
people are still talking about it?
(drums beating)
Back in 2013, Dubai-based car maker, Devel,
announced at the Dubai International Motor Show
their plans to produce a 16-cylinder roadster
capable of 5,000 horsepower with the intent to, quote,
"break all world records".
That's what you want to do as a new company,
you shoot for the freaking moon.
It was also gonna be one of the first cars designed
and produced solely in the United Arab Emirates,
a place every other car on the road is an exotic,
but none of them are really produced there.
According to one of Devel's developers, Rashid Al-Atari,
the company had actually been working
on the Sixteen secretly, since 2006.
In his own words, quote, "we keep it hush".
Rashid also revealed at the unveiling
that this wasn't the only project Devel was working on,
and the other project was, quote,
"Much, much bigger than this one,
you will not be disappointed."
which is something I say when I turn in a script
that's not quite done yet,
I really lean on James' improv skills.
(screaming)
- Never come back.
(screaming)
(gunshots) (blows raspberry)
- Hi, I'm James Pumpkin.
- Breaker one nine, there's some diesel bears
hasslin' a chicken truck.
- Hi. - Hi.
- Hi.
(grunting)
- Getting my seat belt.
(farting)
- Just frightened?
- Don't do this again.
- Always in the frightened zone.
(laughing)
- When the Devel Sixteen prototype
was unveiled to the world, it made waves,
but some waves broke for the wrong reasons.
The prototype was a little rough
with unfinished and ill fitting carbon fiber,
hilariously over the top exhaust ports,
and quilted leather seats that were just, meh.
Car Blog, Motor Authority, said it looked like it was quote,
"Hastily built in a back shed somewhere,"
and that's pretty harsh.
But the looks weren't the only thing the Devel
was getting roasted for.
People balked at the claim that the V16
was going to make 5,000 horsepower, I mean, how?
To put that in perspective,
the most powerful Formula One car ever
made about 1,350 horsepower,
and that was only during qualifying.
If they ran that set up during a race, it would explode.
5,000 seemed like such an arbitrary number,
and it was 4,000 horsepower more
than any production car ever made,
even if it did have 16 cylinders.
But, Devel claimed they were going to build
an entirely new engine,
which for an engine with half the cylinders,
would be a grandiose claim.
Add to that the claim zero to 60 time of 1.6 seconds,
and a top speed of nearly 350 miles per hour,
and it becomes literally unbelievable,
not just hyperboly, but a full-on nuthouse claim.
First of all,
where do you even drive a car 350 miles per hour?
The 5,000 horsepower version of the Sixteen
was only intended to be a track car,
but name a track
that you could even get up to that speed on,
aside from that crazy testing strip that VW used
for the Bugatti Chiron.
Needless to say,
there was a healthy amount of skepticism in car enthusiasts,
myself definitely included.
But not even two years later,
a video came out that put a lot of that negativity to bed,
nighty night, baby boy, I hope you like turbo noises.
(upbeat music) (engine revving)
In 2015, a few years after
the Devel Sixteen prototype debuted,
the company released a video on their YouTube account
that showed the mythical V16 team doing a dyno pull,
that's right, this was real.
There it was with it's full quad turbo glory
silencing the naysayers.
(engine revving)
The engine in question was a sort of Frankensteined LS,
actually two LSs fused together
by Michigan high-performance engine builder, Steve Morris,
and I gotta say this video changed my mind a little bit.
Steve Morris builds around a hundred bespoke
high performance engines a year with (beep) a load of power,
so much power, baby, that they boast that they have a dyno
that can read power values over 4,500 horsepower.
This is not your grand pappy's dyno, that's for sure,
unless your grandpa's is Steve Morris,
in that case, sick.
The engine Steve Morris developed for the Devel
was a 12.3 liter billet block machine
out of a single hunk of metal.
Each of the four turbos are a massive 81 millimeters
and made specifically for this engine.
Actually, a lot of components on this engine
were made specifically for this engine by Steve Morris.
That means the headers, the block,
the one piece crankshaft and one piece camshaft,
air intakes, et cetera.
So yeah, when people say this thing
is just two LSs bolted together,
it's true that this engine does use specific components
from the LS, but that's a gross understatement,
and honestly, kind of a dis.
The level of creativity and precision
that went into making this bespoke engine
is a monumental engineering achievement
on the part of Steve Morris and his shop.
And the proof can be seen in the video
as the V16 teen spools up
and hits an amazing 4,515 horsepower
and 3,519 foot pounds of torque
at 36 pounds of boost, good gracious.
It actually made more power,
but the dyno could only measure up to 4,500 horsepower.
So if the engine is real,
and we've known this for six years now,
why does the Devel Sixteen still catch so much flak?
Well, having a working engine is one thing,
but power is only as good as the car that can harness it,
and that's when things get a little cloudy.
The first production model debuted
at the 2017 Dubai International Motor Show.
This time around,
the model looked a lot more refined than the concept car.
The swooping lines and sloping tail
were much more refined than the concept,
and it actually looked like a fighter jet,
which is what the designers were inspired by.
The over the top dual exhaust was dialed back a bit
and resembled more of Pagani style exhausts
than a plastic tumbler from Batman rip off.
The production model does look pretty bad-ass,
I have to admit.
The interior was dialed back as well.
The concept version had tons of futuristic dials and gauges,
racing seats with colorful leather and ventilation rings,
and even a leather lined floor.
For the production model,
everything is way more sensible and minimalistic,
and fits with other modern supercar interiors.
The only note I have for the interior
is that the steering wheel kinda looks weird.
Everything else on the Sixteen seems legitimate,
it's a carbon fiber monocoque mounted
on an aluminum chassis, which is par for the course
for supercars nowadays.
It also has electronically controlled suspension
with three different modes and varying ride heights,
that's kind of what you want.
The 5,000 horsepower version of the Sixteen
is actually just the top trim level of the car
meant for the track only,
and it costs a staggering $2.2 million.
The other tiers aren't nearly as crazy.
The lowest trim level offers a turbocharged LS V8
tuned to 1500 horsepower and it costs $1.6 million.
The next level up is a street legal version
of the turboed V16, but tuned to make 3000 horsepower,
this model goes for a relative bargain at 1.8 million.
Double the horsepower for only $200,000?
Sign me up, it's like going to the movies
and buying a small popcorn
when you could be getting a large for only 50 cents more,
with refills included.
In theory, this hypercar checks all the boxes for being
one of the most exciting production cars ever built,
but in practice, that's where things start to fall apart.
- This is the most insane car I've ever seen.
- [Nolan] The first time we ever got to see
the Devel Sixteen move under its own power
was November 1st, 2018,
when Supercar Blondie became the first person,
who didn't work for Devel, to drive the thing.
It was, for the most part, a little uneventful.
We got some cold starts.
(horn honks) (engine revving)
We got some rolling footage,
we got to see the interior, nice.
But the problem for a lot of viewers
is that we didn't get to see those 5,000 buff horses
unleashed on a Dubai highway.
But as we'll learn later,
there is a very good and very valid reason for that.
Instead of giving skeptics a big old spoonful
of shut the hell up juice, the exclusive first drive
only made the chorus of haters sing louder.
And just to be clear,
none of this is Supercar Blondie's fault.
If Devel gave us the rights to the first drive,
we would've jumped on that opportunity in an instant,
in fact, Devel, if you want to send us a Sixteen,
I'd love to drive it.
That company got another big marketing boost
when it was reported that Drizzy, AKA, Drake,
ordered one of the first Sixteens off the production line.
But that's about all the info there is about this
and it really hasn't been verified.
A Devel Sixteen did make a cameo in the "I'm Upset" video,
but it wasn't rolling, and you can only see half the car
for about one and a half seconds,
which led to some commenters to theorize
that the monumental insurance costs for driving this car
were too much for the Degrassi star.
It was also reported that Snoop Dogg
was in talks to buy one as well,
but again, not a lot of info, so, I'm not sure.
(car engine revving)
After almost a full decade of teasing supercar fans,
we have yet to see the Devel Sixteen make it to production,
so, will we ever?
Surprisingly, it actually might.
The Devel Sixteen was supposed to go into production
about a year after it debuted at the 2017 Dubai Auto Show.
It still hasn't, and we haven't gotten a lot of updates
from the company.
Why?
Why has the company that claims to have made
the fastest car in the world been so slow to respond?
Well, it goes without saying,
well, making a completely original hypercar from nothing
is difficult.
Us armchair engineers can comment
all we want on social media talking smack about this car,
but what do we know really about designing
a quad turbo-charged 16 cylinder track monster?
I don't know anything.
Many of the claims that Devel is made about performance
are actually backed up by science.
The lead engineer on the project
is an Italian name Paolo Garella, and he seems really cool.
You might've heard of some
of the other projects he's worked on, like the SCG 003,
a 700 horsepower track toy
that weighs just a few hundred pounds more than a Miata,
or the Apollo IE, a V12 beast of a supercar.
Both of these cars are 100% real,
and have been driven and tested,
so why hasn't the Sixteen come to fruition?
Paolo loves a challenge,
which is why he accepted the position
as lead engineer on the Devel Sixteen.
In an interview with Road and Track, he said, quote,
"I mean, to have the possibility
to work on something like this, it's really unique,
but I guess I'm starting to get a reputation among people
for taking up crazy challenges."
Many of the challenges that the team has had to deal with
during the development of the car have to do
with the insane forces a car is under at high speeds.
To get a car to travel at 300 miles per hour,
you need at least 1500 horsepower,
but to get it to go any faster,
you need exponentially more horsepower.
We're talking 1,500 more horsepower
to get it up to 350 miles per.
Jeremiah did a really cool bumper to bumper on this,
check it out, it's about getting a car
to go 1,000 miles per hour.
It's a lot harder than it sounds.
Actually, it sounds pretty hard.
But even after you drop in a power plant
that's able to get you to 350 miles per hour,
you're only halfway there.
Devel engineers are struggling to find a transmission
that can handle all that torque.
The transmission they're currently using
on the lower trim levels
results in a 500 horsepower mechanical loss.
Also, fluid aerodynamics become crushing
at speeds that high,
and it's one thing that's been a major headache
in the development of the Devel Sixteen.
Vortexes form underneath the car that can destabilize it,
air gets trapped towards the rear
that doesn't dissipate fast enough.
These are all things that could tank the reputation
of the Devel Sixteen if the car goes into production
before it's ready.
On top of all that,
you have to wonder if the technology is already outdated.
I mean, think about it,
this car has essentially been in development since 2006,
that's 15 years.
Whatever technology is in this car
had to go multiple revisions to remain state-of-the-art
and maintain its edge over modern supercars.
The video game equivalent of the Devel Sixteen
is Cyberpunk 2077.
That game was in development for nine years
and when it finally came out,
it was pretty disappointing to say the least.
Now, imagine if you spent $2.2 million
on your copy of Cyberpunk,
try getting that refund back.
The bar is extra high, not only because of the claims
that Devel is putting out about their hypercar,
but also because everyone's been anticipating
this car for so long.
The hype surrounding this car has gotten so out of hand
that it eclipses the actual car it's going to be.
I'm not sure the Devel Sixteen
will actually make it to production,
but if it does, I'm sure some of those claims
will be dialed back just a little bit.
It's also pretty telling that the company
has already announced a second model
before the first one has rolled off the production line.
(car engine revving)
That's right, the Devel Sixty is a six by six off-road brute
powered by a 6.7 liter turbo diesel V8.
But unlike the Sixteen,
this warthog has already been tested,
and it smoked them Mercedes AM GT in a drag race.
(car engine revving)
Here that turbo diesel peel out in third gear?
Maybe I should start believing the hype.
Thank you very much for watching Wheelhouse,
I've been wanting to talk about this car
for a long, long time,
and I honestly hope it works out for 'em.
I want to believe that something like the Sixteen
is possible, that's exciting to me.
If you haven't seen our video on the Lykan HyperSport,
another crazy supercar from the UAE,
click the link right there.
Check out the D-list right here.
Follow Donut on all social media @donutmedia.
Follow me if you want @nolanjsykes,
TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, it's all there for you.
Be kind, I will see you next week.