5,000-hp Devel Sixteen shown driving in short clip

It’s been a while since we heard anything about the Devel Sixteen, the elusive hypercar that claims to be able to go 310 mph. It was the 2017 Dubai Motor Show, in fact, where it showed off what it said was the production version of the 5,007-horsepower car. So what’s the company been up to since then?

Well, that’s hard to say beyond the presumable litany of tests and development tweaks the company is putting the car through before it — again, presumably — goes into production. Meanwhile, the company released a short clip of the car driving down a windy desert road.

Before you get too excited, know that it’s driven at a rather leisurely pace. So there’s nothing here to suggest that Devel can make good on any of its claims. But we do at least get a look at the car in action, such as it is, and you get a fleeting sense of how the exhaust sounds (though it’s better in the video embedded below). For what it’s worth, the YouTube commenters are almost uniformly skeptical and unimpressed. If this has anything to do with wanting to reclaim some buzz in the wake of Bugatti’s recent feat of breaking the 300-mph barrier in a prototype Chiron, then it’s an odd way to do it.

Meanwhile, there are some more recent details about the company’s plans for the car. Devel plans three different versions, starting with a pair of street-legal versions: the base, which puts out a mere (!) 2,000 horsepower, courtesy of a V8, will reportedly start around $1.6 million, and a midrange 3,000-hp variant equipped with the vaunted V16 quad-turbo engine for a cool $1.8 million. The grand Poobah 5,000-hp version will come with an 81-mm quad-turbo 12.3-liter V16, cost around $2.2 million, and with production reportedly capped at seven examples per year, be built in Texas.

Meanwhile, the last anyone had seen of the Sixteen was last November, when Supercar Blondie got a chance to sit in the car and drive it, gingerly, in Dubai and the surrounding desert.

The clip, embedded above, is also worthwhile for the brief interview with Majid Al Attar, Devel’s co-founder along with his two brothers and the car’s designer. At the time, Al Attar said they’d hoped to have the car in testing in early 2019.