Official Teaser Video for ‘5,000-HP’ Devel Sixteen Looks Like It Was Made by Someone’s Uncle
Not the best look for a company trying to sell a million-dollar car that isn’t finished yet.
Had anyone else forgotten about the Devel Sixteen? I had, it's hard to commit to memory something as absurd as a Dubai-designed hypercar with a quad-turbo, 5,000-horsepower V16 engine and claimed top speed near 350 mph. Its concept has been kicking around since 2013, almost as long as the SSC Tuatara, leading many people to write it off as vaporware. Even so, Devel's still trying to make the Sixteen happen, as it showed by uploading a dev video that only makes it look more amateur than ever.
Posted to YouTube in late July, the video shows a prototype Sixteen testing on an airstrip in Lecco, Italy, its 12.3-liter V16 supposedly running without forced induction. The car depicted parades around in primer, which itself isn't a problem for a prototype, though it does suggest the vehicle Devel let social media personalities drive in 2019 was nowhere close to a finished product.
Even less professional-looking than the car itself is the video showcasing it, much of which is a silent slideshow, the likes of which any seven-year-old aspiring Twitch streamer could improve on. There's a strange, low-framerate closeup of the concept car, and a string of driving videos seemingly recorded on an older smartphone. Might want to invest in some video equipment to help sell your more than million-dollar hypercar, guys.
At the end of the video, Devel says orders for the Sixteen are open now, and pledges delivery within eight months. Given they apparently promised to originally launch the car back in 2019, according to Autoevolution, expect those to be eight months on Elon Musk time. In other words, it might arrive on schedule, or it might miss that deadline and simply never be spoken of again.
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