The Development of the Devale 16: A Story of Hype and Reality

A vacuum in the dino room and close the exhaust van Louver shut if there ever was a power plant to propel a road car past 300 M per hour this definitely was it but there was one glaring problem, the transmission or lack thereof of a transmission that could withstand 3757 lb feet of torque. The level of power the V16 quad turbo engine can muster isn't unheard of, especially in Drag Racing funny cars for example don't use a transmission with gears but instead use a multi-stage clutch assembly that is activated by timers that gradually slip the clutch discs and engage them as it travels down the track. One gear ratio for top speed and a lot of clutch slip for acceleration so much clutch slip in fact that the clutch assembly is rebuilt in between passes, not something ideal for a road car.

A six or seven-speed dual-clutch transmission would be ideal for the Devale 16 but a dual-clutch able to handle 3757 lb feet of torque literally just didn't exist. Not only did a transmission not exist but also tires rated to surpass 300 M per hour did not exist. The Michelin tire specifically designed for the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport would explode in mere minutes over 270 mph and at a claimed 340 mph top speed it would ensure certain death to any mortal in the driver's seat. Two years of development would pass, and the Devale 16 would be redesigned to a more palatable "quote unquote" production version. Devil Motors planned for the car to be completed in the next 12 to 18 months including testing but that would soon fall apart.

On November 1st, 2018, a YouTuber by the name of Supercar Blondie would get to be the first independent tester of the Devale 16 showcasing the exterior and interior and not much else. Purposefully, the engine cover was never opened, acceleration tests were never done, and it didn't even drive more than 80 or so mph and that was it. That was the video in essence; it was a marketing stunt to build hype satisfy investors and gain some more pre-orders while it did gain tons of media attention but quickly fizzled out to loads of criticism.

Even the video of it launching and accelerating was purposefully sped up to give a sense of speed, and commenters would quickly catch on. Even the alarm to let you know the keys were still in it was directly from the car's Corvette anticipated cars raising the question was the production model just a modified C8 stretched to the Devale 16's dimensions or was it a true bespoke hypercar? What well I did some digging, and I found some rather interesting similarities if you look at Devale Motors' Instagram on May 16th of 2021 they published a picture of the 16s chassis with the caption introducing the Devale 16 state-of-the-art chassis to the untrained eye. It looked like something custom-made for the Devale 16 but slowly the alarm bells rang in my head since it reminded me of another mid-engine sports car I have a lot of knowledge of.

The Devale chassis shared Stark similarities using the same crash bar, the same frame rails that were just shortened in length even behind the seats. Similar rivet points and construction were used, and the most alarming sign was the rear suspension strut towers were identical; it was 100% without a doubt using C8 structural components which coincides between the debut in 2017 and track testing in 2021. The Devale went under a structural makeover right around the same time General Motors released the C8 to the public as an egregious as this is, this isn't a new concept; plenty of cars have been built on top of production chassis cars most notably the Vador which is an Infiniti G35 with an over-the-top Lamborghini-inspired body kit kind of like in the 80s when Pontiac Fieros were converted into Ferraris and in the 2000s Toyota mr2s were converted into Porsche career GT lookalikes.

The problem lies when being classified as a hypercar in the realm of Kix EG Pagani Bugatti and others that have chassis built in-house rather than a modified twin turbo C8 Corvette which you could build for right around $100,000 rather than the Devale 16's $2.2 million price tag what was once seen as the ultimate hypercar turns out to be after all a kit car a very expensive Corvette-based engine and two turbos missing kit car nonetheless, a production model was sold for undisclosed amounts of money to a buyer in Japan and it's the only known working example devoid of that Steve Morse V16 engine. The Devale 16 serves as a reminder to believe nothing that you hear and half of what you see.

I've religiously followed the Devale 16's development since I was in high school but 11 years later, a couple pounds several pounds heavier maybe, it raised even more questions about the project's validity. What exactly was the Devale 16 supposed to be? A supercar that combined cutting-edge technology with the iconic V16 engine? Or just another failed experiment in the world of exotic car manufacturing? The truth remains unclear, but one thing is certain: the Devale 16 will forever hold a place in the history books as one of the most ambitious and baffling automotive projects ever conceived.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enon December 7th 2015 a video surfaced on the internet of an Engine That Could Make unfathomable power it was built by a michigan-based engine builder named Steve Morris and it was painstakingly designed to power one of the most ambitious hypercar projects world had ever seen it had performance targets that made the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport and kic seg Agera RS look like Child's Play its parent company devel Motors claimed the car would be able to exceed the 300 mph barrier with the help of its quad turbo V16 engine all for the no haggle price of $2 million it was in essence the most ambitious production car since the McLaren F1 and in Theory would go down in record books as the fastest production car ever period but then the age-old saying anything that can go wrong will go wrong would make its timely entrance this is the story of the brainchild of the alatar brothers this is the Glorious rise and tumultuous fall of the devil 16 if you want to ride your bicycle twice as fast you'll have to be eight times more powerful it's the prison we must deal with being on Earth ruled by the laws of physics if we lived in the vacuum of space all we'd ever have to worry about was the energy needed to change our state from one speed to another simply put a car that needs 200 horsepower to overcome aerodynamic drag at 150 mph would need 1,600 horsepower to reach 300 mph or double the speed since we have to abide by these rules if you want to go twice as fast as the next guy you're going to need eight times the horsepower the kind of horsepower that takes unconventional methods to achieve to break the McLaren f1's top speed record of 240. one mph it took 7 years 1.62 billion dollar in research and development and a w16 quad turbo engine making almost 400 more horsepower to Eclipse it by only 13 mph with the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 top speed records are an exercise and who can burn the most cubic dollars in a childish game of nana nana boo boo you can't catch me and in 2006 the alatar brothers would look to join in on the schoolyard Shenanigans the devel 16 conceptually began in 2006 taking heavy inspiration from the Veyron speed capabilities with research and development secretly beginning in 2008 and the first concept being revealed at the 2013 Dubai International motor show it was exactly what you would expect from a startup company trying to make a bold statement it was a mix of the McDonald Douglas F-15 Eagle and a Lamborghini Veneno but mashed together with questionable Precision in its reveal the brake calipers look to be from a Honda Fit not a 300 mph Road car the tires were poorly sized the fit and finish was to say lightly left much to be desired and quickly the hype around the devel 16 turned into a textbook case of vaporware see the term vaporware originates from the computer industry which describes software or Hardware that has been advertised with great claims without being publicly available in essence it's a marketing stunt to drive buzz and lure in investors to boost up stock prices and in some extreme cases even fraud a late 80s Supercar known as the vector W8 comes to mind as it was supposedly a 1200 horsepower rocket ship with a transverse mounted twin turbo intercooled small block V8 and a three-speed automatic from the old mobile Toronado all hidden under the breathtaking silhouette designed by its creator Gerald wgard but in independent testing by Car and Driver all three test cars broke the red prototype burning up its transmission the gray prototype overheating to the point of the engine eating itself and another red prototype losing its final gear in Reverse during quarter mile testing while it was purchasable for a hefty $685,000 none of the vector WS lived up to the claims of a 242 mph top speed and 1200 horsepower and to No Surprise the company went bankrupt in the mid90s the Devale 16 was destined to join the never-ending list of over promised and never delivered supercars of the past but then a video surfaced an engine builder in Muskegan Michigan by the name of Steve Morris who was contracted by devel Motors to build the engine finally gave a glimpse of what it was capable of it was a 12.3 L V16 engine based on LS architecture but rather than cast aluminum construction it was made from a single block of Billet aluminum the Billet construction stretched further than just the engine block with a Billet steel crankshaft a Billet twin board intake manifold a Billet timing cover and a Billet dry suome oiling system it was unique but technically not the first V16 LS you could thank Cadillac for that with the xv16 concept engine that made 1,000 horsepower naturally aspirated with 13.6 L of displacement and powered the Cadillac 16 Concept in 2003 the similarities ended when it came to induction the devel 16's engine was accompanied with 4 81 mm turbochargers which when combined with race gas at full Boost which consumed so much air under Peak power it created a vacuum in the dino room and close the exhaust van Louver shut if there ever was a power plant to propel a road car past 300 M per hour this definitely was it but there was one glaring problem the transmission or lack thereof of a transmission that could withstand 3757 lb feet of torque the level of power the V16 quad turbo engine can muster isn't unheard of especially in Drag Racing funny cars for example don't use a transmission with gears but instead use a multi-stage clutch assembly that is activated by timers that gradually slip the clutch discs and engage them as it travels down the track one gear ratio for top speed and a lot of clutch slip for acceleration so much clutch slip in fact that the clutch assembly is rebuilt in between passes not something ideal for a road car a six or seven-speed dual clutch transmission would be ideal for the devel 16 but a dual clutch able to handle 3757 lbet of torque literally just didn't exist not only did a transmission not exist also tires rated to surpass 300 mil per hour did not exist the Michelin tire specifically designed for the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport would explode in mere minutes over 270 mph and at a claimed 340 mph top speed it would ensure certain death to any mortal in the driver's seat two years of development would pass and the Devale 16 would be redesigned to a more palatable quote unquote production version devil Motors planned for the car to be completed in the next 12 to 18 months including testing but that would soon fall apart on November 1st 2018 a YouTuber by the name of Supercar Blondie would get to be the first independent tester of the devel 16 showcasing the exterior the interior and not much else purposefully the engine cover was never opened acceleration tests were never done it didn't even drive more than 80 or so milph and that was it that was the video in essence it was a marketing stunt to build hype satisfy investors and gain some more pre-orders while it did gain tons of media attention it quickly fizzled out to loads of criticism even the video of it launching and accelerating was purposefully sped up to give a sense of speed and commenters would quickly catch on even the alarm to let you know the keys were still in it was directly from the ca Corvette anticipated cars raising the question was the production model just a modified C8 stretched to the devel 16's Dimensions or was it a true bespoke hyper car what well I did some digging and I found some rather interesting similarities if you look at devel Motors Instagram on May 16th of 2021 they published a picture of the 16s chassis with the caption introducing the devel 16 state-of-the-art chassis to the untrained eye it looked like something custommade for the devel 16 but slowly the alarm Bells rung in my head since it reminded me of another Mid Engine sports car I have a lot of knowledge of the Devale chassis shared Stark simil ities using the same crash bar the same frame rails that were just shortened in length even behind the seats similar rivet points and construction and the most alarming sign was the rear suspension strut Towers were identical it was 100% without a doubt using C8 structural components which coincides between the debut in 2017 and track testing in 2021 the devil went under a structural makeover right around the same time General Motors released the C8 to the public as a as egregious as this is this isn't a New Concept plenty of cars have been built on top of production chassis cars most notably the Vador which is an Infiniti G35 with an over-the-top Lamborghini inspired body kit kind of like in the 80s when Pontiac Fieros were converted into Ferraris and in the 2000s Toyota mr2s were converted into Porsche career GT lookalikes the problem Lies when being classified as a hyper car in the realm of Kix EG Pagani Bugatti and others that have chass built inh housee rather than a modified twin turbo C8 Corvette which you could build for right around $100,000 rather than the Devale 16's $2.2 million price tag what was once seen as the ultimate hyper car turns out to be after all a kit car a very expensive Corvette based 8 cylinder and two turbos missing kit car nonetheless a production model was sold for undisclosed amounts of money to a buyer in Japan and it's the only known working example devoid of that Steve Morse V16 engine the devel 16 serves as a reminder to believe nothing that you hear and half of what you see I've religiously followed the devil 16's development since I was in high school but 11 years later a couple pounds several pounds heavier maybe they were right maybe it was all just vaporwareon December 7th 2015 a video surfaced on the internet of an Engine That Could Make unfathomable power it was built by a michigan-based engine builder named Steve Morris and it was painstakingly designed to power one of the most ambitious hypercar projects world had ever seen it had performance targets that made the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport and kic seg Agera RS look like Child's Play its parent company devel Motors claimed the car would be able to exceed the 300 mph barrier with the help of its quad turbo V16 engine all for the no haggle price of $2 million it was in essence the most ambitious production car since the McLaren F1 and in Theory would go down in record books as the fastest production car ever period but then the age-old saying anything that can go wrong will go wrong would make its timely entrance this is the story of the brainchild of the alatar brothers this is the Glorious rise and tumultuous fall of the devil 16 if you want to ride your bicycle twice as fast you'll have to be eight times more powerful it's the prison we must deal with being on Earth ruled by the laws of physics if we lived in the vacuum of space all we'd ever have to worry about was the energy needed to change our state from one speed to another simply put a car that needs 200 horsepower to overcome aerodynamic drag at 150 mph would need 1,600 horsepower to reach 300 mph or double the speed since we have to abide by these rules if you want to go twice as fast as the next guy you're going to need eight times the horsepower the kind of horsepower that takes unconventional methods to achieve to break the McLaren f1's top speed record of 240. one mph it took 7 years 1.62 billion dollar in research and development and a w16 quad turbo engine making almost 400 more horsepower to Eclipse it by only 13 mph with the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 top speed records are an exercise and who can burn the most cubic dollars in a childish game of nana nana boo boo you can't catch me and in 2006 the alatar brothers would look to join in on the schoolyard Shenanigans the devel 16 conceptually began in 2006 taking heavy inspiration from the Veyron speed capabilities with research and development secretly beginning in 2008 and the first concept being revealed at the 2013 Dubai International motor show it was exactly what you would expect from a startup company trying to make a bold statement it was a mix of the McDonald Douglas F-15 Eagle and a Lamborghini Veneno but mashed together with questionable Precision in its reveal the brake calipers look to be from a Honda Fit not a 300 mph Road car the tires were poorly sized the fit and finish was to say lightly left much to be desired and quickly the hype around the devel 16 turned into a textbook case of vaporware see the term vaporware originates from the computer industry which describes software or Hardware that has been advertised with great claims without being publicly available in essence it's a marketing stunt to drive buzz and lure in investors to boost up stock prices and in some extreme cases even fraud a late 80s Supercar known as the vector W8 comes to mind as it was supposedly a 1200 horsepower rocket ship with a transverse mounted twin turbo intercooled small block V8 and a three-speed automatic from the old mobile Toronado all hidden under the breathtaking silhouette designed by its creator Gerald wgard but in independent testing by Car and Driver all three test cars broke the red prototype burning up its transmission the gray prototype overheating to the point of the engine eating itself and another red prototype losing its final gear in Reverse during quarter mile testing while it was purchasable for a hefty $685,000 none of the vector WS lived up to the claims of a 242 mph top speed and 1200 horsepower and to No Surprise the company went bankrupt in the mid90s the Devale 16 was destined to join the never-ending list of over promised and never delivered supercars of the past but then a video surfaced an engine builder in Muskegan Michigan by the name of Steve Morris who was contracted by devel Motors to build the engine finally gave a glimpse of what it was capable of it was a 12.3 L V16 engine based on LS architecture but rather than cast aluminum construction it was made from a single block of Billet aluminum the Billet construction stretched further than just the engine block with a Billet steel crankshaft a Billet twin board intake manifold a Billet timing cover and a Billet dry suome oiling system it was unique but technically not the first V16 LS you could thank Cadillac for that with the xv16 concept engine that made 1,000 horsepower naturally aspirated with 13.6 L of displacement and powered the Cadillac 16 Concept in 2003 the similarities ended when it came to induction the devel 16's engine was accompanied with 4 81 mm turbochargers which when combined with race gas at full Boost which consumed so much air under Peak power it created a vacuum in the dino room and close the exhaust van Louver shut if there ever was a power plant to propel a road car past 300 M per hour this definitely was it but there was one glaring problem the transmission or lack thereof of a transmission that could withstand 3757 lb feet of torque the level of power the V16 quad turbo engine can muster isn't unheard of especially in Drag Racing funny cars for example don't use a transmission with gears but instead use a multi-stage clutch assembly that is activated by timers that gradually slip the clutch discs and engage them as it travels down the track one gear ratio for top speed and a lot of clutch slip for acceleration so much clutch slip in fact that the clutch assembly is rebuilt in between passes not something ideal for a road car a six or seven-speed dual clutch transmission would be ideal for the devel 16 but a dual clutch able to handle 3757 lbet of torque literally just didn't exist not only did a transmission not exist also tires rated to surpass 300 mil per hour did not exist the Michelin tire specifically designed for the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport would explode in mere minutes over 270 mph and at a claimed 340 mph top speed it would ensure certain death to any mortal in the driver's seat two years of development would pass and the Devale 16 would be redesigned to a more palatable quote unquote production version devil Motors planned for the car to be completed in the next 12 to 18 months including testing but that would soon fall apart on November 1st 2018 a YouTuber by the name of Supercar Blondie would get to be the first independent tester of the devel 16 showcasing the exterior the interior and not much else purposefully the engine cover was never opened acceleration tests were never done it didn't even drive more than 80 or so milph and that was it that was the video in essence it was a marketing stunt to build hype satisfy investors and gain some more pre-orders while it did gain tons of media attention it quickly fizzled out to loads of criticism even the video of it launching and accelerating was purposefully sped up to give a sense of speed and commenters would quickly catch on even the alarm to let you know the keys were still in it was directly from the ca Corvette anticipated cars raising the question was the production model just a modified C8 stretched to the devel 16's Dimensions or was it a true bespoke hyper car what well I did some digging and I found some rather interesting similarities if you look at devel Motors Instagram on May 16th of 2021 they published a picture of the 16s chassis with the caption introducing the devel 16 state-of-the-art chassis to the untrained eye it looked like something custommade for the devel 16 but slowly the alarm Bells rung in my head since it reminded me of another Mid Engine sports car I have a lot of knowledge of the Devale chassis shared Stark simil ities using the same crash bar the same frame rails that were just shortened in length even behind the seats similar rivet points and construction and the most alarming sign was the rear suspension strut Towers were identical it was 100% without a doubt using C8 structural components which coincides between the debut in 2017 and track testing in 2021 the devil went under a structural makeover right around the same time General Motors released the C8 to the public as a as egregious as this is this isn't a New Concept plenty of cars have been built on top of production chassis cars most notably the Vador which is an Infiniti G35 with an over-the-top Lamborghini inspired body kit kind of like in the 80s when Pontiac Fieros were converted into Ferraris and in the 2000s Toyota mr2s were converted into Porsche career GT lookalikes the problem Lies when being classified as a hyper car in the realm of Kix EG Pagani Bugatti and others that have chass built inh housee rather than a modified twin turbo C8 Corvette which you could build for right around $100,000 rather than the Devale 16's $2.2 million price tag what was once seen as the ultimate hyper car turns out to be after all a kit car a very expensive Corvette based 8 cylinder and two turbos missing kit car nonetheless a production model was sold for undisclosed amounts of money to a buyer in Japan and it's the only known working example devoid of that Steve Morse V16 engine the devel 16 serves as a reminder to believe nothing that you hear and half of what you see I've religiously followed the devil 16's development since I was in high school but 11 years later a couple pounds several pounds heavier maybe they were right maybe it was all just vaporware\n"