Ferdinand Piëch was not your average CEO. His fingerprints are on icons like the Audi Quattro and Porsche 917, and he never settled for ordinary. Under his leadership, the Volkswagen Group unleashed some of the most technically daring cars ever built. Think of the Passat W8, the Phaeton W12, and diesel monsters like the V12 TDI in the Audi Q7. Piëch demanded progress at any cost, driving engineers to create engines and cars that were once thought impossible.

In 1999, Bugatti shocked everyone with the 18/3 Chiron, powered by a naturally aspirated W18 engine. But it was the W16—a 8.0 liter, quad turbocharged masterpiece—that truly changed everything. Volkswagen needed a real world platform to test this powerhouse, long before the first Veyron hit the road. The answer was radical: put the W16 into a Lamborghini Diablo SV. Engineers ripped out the Italian V12, reinforced the chassis, and made space for the massive new heart. Rare photos from the Autostadt Museum show the Diablo’s raw, race inspired bodywork, complete with added vents to tame the heat from that 1,000 horsepower beast.

The W16 was not only meant for Bugatti at first. It powered concept cars like the Bentley Hunaudières and Audi Rosemeyer, both wild visions that helped shape the future of Volkswagen Group engineering. Even the famous Volkswagen W12 Nardo showed off the brand’s twelve cylinder might before Bentley’s final W12 bowed out in 2024. Now, the W16 era ends with the Bugatti Mistral, passing the torch to an all new V16 in the Bugatti Tourbillon. Lamborghini, meanwhile, honors its V12 roots in the electrified Revuelto. But the secret Diablo W16 reminds us that the boldest achievements start with mad experiments far from the spotlight.