In 2021, we’re so used to companies lying to us when they sell us products that we pretty much accept it as a fact of reality. It’s one thing if said product is an overpriced vegetable juicer, but lying about a 300 mile per hour 5000 horsepower ultra-car is just bad optics all around, but these are the very serious accusations currently being levied on the folks at Devel.
After almost half a decade of marketing the Devel Sixteen as the next big thing, countless delays, and dubious business practices, people are starting to get really angry with the upstart middle eastern auto venture.
At the time the company should have been developing their first-generation halo car, they were already advertising designs for a replacement supercar. Even as a handful of mockups represented the entire Devel Sixteen production run to this point. We desperately wanted the Devel Sixteen to be the real deal, but after more and more silence from the people in charge, all that we have at this point are questions.
There’s no concrete evidence that Devel is outright lying at this moment. But the longer we have to wait, the more people start to wonder.
Devel At A Glance
For how much hype Devel managed to conjure up about their golden goose hypercar, not much is known if anything about the people behind the project. What we do know is this, the company was founded in Dubai in the mid-2000s, and supposedly has been working on the Sixteen project since 2008.
The company also markets a six-wheeled turbo diesel off-road vehicle called the Sixty on their website, with mockups showing up at recent auto shows in the middle east. We suppose you could call this six-wheeled “thing” a half-million-dollar play toy for the ultra-wealthy. But to be taken seriously on the supercar side of things, they’ll have to do better than mere parlor tricks to be taken seriously.
Almost A Decade Of Waiting
2013 feels like centuries ago, but it’s the year the fresh-faced Devel Sixteen showed its face to the world. Since then, there’s been promotional material galore, including test drives with Youtubers like SupercarBlondie. Reports even suggest that rapper Snoop Dogg was in talks to buy one.
No one’s sure if these test drives were done in the production-spec version of the Sixteen, but the specs claimed by Devel make any other car look like a little tyke pedal car, assuming any of it was true.
Face Melting Horsepower, If It’s Real
A little while ago, we called a 55 Chevy Bel Aire with the engine from a World War II fighter plane the craziest engine swap we’ve ever seen. That 1650 cubic inch V-12 made around 3000 horsepower. The Devel Sixteen promises to make best that by almost 60 percent.
Devel swears up and down their in-house fusion of two Chevrolet V8 blocks and four 81 millimeter turbochargers will make 5,007 horsepower. Why such an oddly specific number? Possibly to poke fun at the 707 horsepower from the Mopar Hellcat engine. There’s also a standard V8 version offeered with a measley 2000 horsepower.
In any case, at least the Hellcat’s performance numbers have been verified more times than anyone can count. Can’t say the same about the Sixteen, now it should be perfectly clear why people are starting to get really fed up with this far-east upstart brand.
Nothing But Silence For Years
Years came and went, so too did article after article about what the Sixteen could poentially bring to the table. Being faster than any Bugatti Chiron or Koniegsegg ever even claimed to be tends to do things like that.
But for all the 12 million plus views and all the hype around Supercar Blondies review of a supposed prototype in 2018, Devel has been just about radio silent ever since. A global pandemic can be faulted for this to a certain extent, but a lack of communication of any kind leaves the entire project in doubt.
Eight long years after the first prototype revelaed itself to the world, some people have had just about enough of waiting around, and have long since moved onto other hypercars to gawk at. After all this time, some are outright acusing Devel of lying from the very begining. The implications of acusations as serious as that have very real consequences if proven true.
After All This Time, We’re Sick Of The Stalling
It’s not so much that the Devel Sixteen is seemingly stuck in developement purgatory that bothers most people. Plenty of great cars took a while to get off the ground. It’s the sneakyness and aparant delliberate lack of communication that leads some to suspect ill intentions.
If Devel wants to humor the idea of being considered a legitimate condender in the high tech hypercar community, they best get their PR situation under control. People are fed up with waiting, and the longer things wait, the worse off they’ll be.
Sources: Supercar Blondie, Devel.com
About The Author