The boom for high-end, ultra-exclusive and ludicrously expensive supercars has never been more robust.
It seems the world’s wealthy are more affluent than ever before, and if you can produce a motor car with a hefty price tag and low production numbers, they will sell.
It’s this boom that has drawn one of the most bonkers names of the last supercar bubble out of the woodwork: Cizeta.
Back in November 2021, I published an article about Cizeta.
‘Cizeta Automobili SRL only built twenty models of the Cizeta V16T, and the Cizeta brand never launched another vehicle. That said, you could order one custom manufactured; however, since 2003, none have been built.’
According to a new report, Germany-based Italian businessman Antonio Mandelli has bought what’s left of Cizeta Automobili SRL with plans to bring it back from the dead. He’ll be doing so with €40 million backing from Deutsche Bank and intends to make an official announcement after obtaining the blessing of Cizeta V16T designer Marcello Gandini.
Gandini is perhaps best known for designing the original Countach. Recently, he felt the need to put out a statement distancing himself from the new ‘Countach’. His work on the Cizeta V16T drew elements from a prototype version of the Countach’s successor, the Diablo.
It seems that Cizeta’s revival intends to use an updated version of the strange engine from the previous Cizeta, the V16T, a machine made up of Lamborghini bits, using two Uracco 90-degree V8s joined to create a thoroughly weird 6.0-litre V16 with four-cylinder heads and eight camshafts.
They use such old technology when the apparent route would fit an all-electric motor, the power method of choice for forthcoming hypercars.
A modern carbon fibre tub will contain the engine rather than the tubular space frame from the original Cizeta.
A prototype is in existence.
Stranger things have happened.