DCAWD.com

A year ago, the luckiest of these virtual alloy molecules were grooving and grinding to the synthesized machinations of the first V-16 engine of the millennium. The mission to build an actual running engine for the Detroit-show-stealing Cadillac Sixteen concept was launched in mid-March 2002. At that point, Cadillac could have simply FedEx'd a couple of V-8 crate motors to a prototyping shop and subjected them to a welding-torch wedding. That process could have produced a V-16 that would start, idle, and move the concept car onto and off its auto-show runway.

Instead, GM decided to flex its advanced engine-engineering muscle and highlight technology that would soon be appearing on the Gen IV Corvette V-8 by designing and building a real V-16 from scratch—one that could operate under load at redline on a dynamometer. No weld-'em-up motor could ever withstand that.

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By October 30, an actual—not virtual—13.6-liter, 32-valve XV16 was assembled and brought to life on a dynamometer. Fully dressed, the all-aluminum engine weighs just 695 pounds—64 pounds less than GM's 8.1-liter production V-8, and its dry-sump lubrication system with eight scavenging pumps makes it compact enough to limbo under the Sixteen's long, ultra-low hood. After a couple weeks of real-world bench tuning, that hapless dyno was groaning under the full onslaught of the 1000 horses and 1000 pound-feet of torque that the computer had prophesied.