Cizeta V16T supercar returns

The Italian hypercar brand that marked the peak excess in the late 1980s and early 1990s is back, with an Italian entrepreneur returning the Cizeta name to the booming multi-million-dollar supercar industry.

Frankfurt-based Italian Antonio Mandelli is said to be waiting on an endorsement from Cizeta V16T designer Marcello Gandini before announcing the project, sources have said.

Mandelli, who runs a luxury Italian import and trading business in Germany, claims to have bought the scattered remains of the long-dead Cizeta Automobili SRL and revived the brand.

Mandelli told a group of enthusiasts last week, when he presented this image to them, that he had secured €40 million in funding from Deutsche Bank and that his prototype for the new model had already covered its first 50km.

Only 12 Cizeta V16Ts are confirmed to have been built, with two of them sent to the Sultan of Brunei during his car-collecting phase, and the last time a Cizeta snared headlines was when one of them was seized by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2009.

In an age of all-electric hypercars like the Rimac Nevera and the Pininfarina Battista, the all-new Cizeta V16T will use a combustion engine, but not just any combustion engine.

Mandelli plans to use a modernised version of the quad-turbo V16 that powered the original car (also pictured here), which was a brave move even in contemporary times, but even more out of step with the electrified times of today.

The original 6.0-litre 16-cylinder engine was mounted across the middle of the V16T and shared some parts and its bore and stroke dimensions with the Lamborghini Uracco P300’s V8.

It used the Lamborghini’s crankshafts and four-valve cylinder-heads, and the result was a mid-engined hypercar capable of 328km/h and 0-100km/h sprints in the 4.5-second region.

Lamborghini is on its third owner since Cizeta’s original appearance, so it was fortunate that the Modena-based Cizeta didn’t rely on its Sant’Agata Bolognese neighbour for parts.

Instead, the engine block was made by a local Formula 1 supplier, which delivered a single aluminium alloy casting with two steel crankshafts that meet at the centre, where Cizeta also housed all the valvetrain gear.

The cranks, made by France’s prototype specialist Mobilor, met in the middle of the car, with gears feeding torque and power to a ZF five-speed manual gearbox.

Unlike the hand-welded, chromoly tube-framed V16T, the comeback car will be based on a carbon-fibre tub, with a body that has already been designed but awaits approval from Gandini.

By all accounts, Gandini was never in love with his design for the V16T, and started on a fresh design after the original prototype had been built.

The final Cizeta V16T ran the original front-end design for the Lamborghini Diablo, which had been discarded by the supercar company’s new owner, Chrysler.

Cizeta was founded by Claudio Zampolli, an Italian ex-Lamborghini automotive engineer, with financial backing from music producer and composer Giorgio Moroder.

The cars were to be badged ‘Cizeta-Moroder’ but Cizeta launched right about the time the excesses of the 1980s grew to bubble proportions and popped, and Moroder (who composed the music for The Never Ending Story) abandoned the project, taking one car with him.

The Cizeta V16T was listed for sale at $US650,000, though few were built. A total of 12 were built in Italy, and another two followed when the bankrupted company was reborn in Los Angeles as Cizeta Automobili USA.

Zampolli, who died in July last year, insisted as late as 2018 that the cars could be built again as they were originally designed. There is, optimistically, a website that, to this day, offers an order page for the original car, even though it is not legal to own or drive in the US.

One of the first road cars to use single-nut wheels, the V16T also employed two-piece OZ Racing alloys and 17-inch Pirelli PZero tyres, with four-spot Brembo brakes up front.

The rear-wheel drive 1700kg monster had an adjustable front anti-rollbar along with a fixed rear one. It had no ABS or traction control, but did come with power steering and air-conditioning.