The Cizeta-Moroder V16T is a '90s legend | GRR
It was billed as the next great Italian supercar, a step up on all those eight- and 12-cylinder pin-up cars of the 1980s thanks to stop-the-traffic styling, XXL size and a 16-cylinder engine, then the world’s first productionised V16. In 1988 the Cizeta-Moroder V16T was, briefly, the Italian supercar to beat, and the most famous of all of them was the pearl white/red leather prototype you see here. Like it? It’s yours – for around $1 million US.
Some might say that at its sale estimate of between $900,000-$1.2m, the Cizeta-Moroder V16T chassis number one is a snip given such a high profile place in Italian supercar history and this particular example’s provenance.
The 200mph supercar was dreamed up in the US but created in Italy by ex-Lamborghini engineers who viewed it as the spiritual successor to the Countach. It was all the idea of Claudio Zampolli (the “CZ” in the car’s name). A former Lambo test and development engineer, he had swapped Sant’Agata Bolognese for Los Angeles where he ran a business importing Italian sportscars – and where he hatched his 16-cylinder plan to upset the Italian supercar hierarchy.
Countach designer Marcello Gandini did the design. It is said he had originally drawn it as his proposal for a new Lambo, what was to be the Diablo, but it didn’t find favour with Lambo’s Chrysler owners of the time so it became the Cizeta instead. Even so, the similarities with the Diablo are plain to see.
Ensuring this bunch of ex-Lambo guys had the backing to make what at the time they hoped would be 50 cars a year was an American Lamborghini fan and Countach owner, the Oscar-winning composer and record producer, Giorgio Moroder, aka “the father of disco”. Moroder took the first car – the white one that did the motor show and magazine test rounds in 1989 – and it is that car which RM Sotheby’s is selling in Arizona on 27th January.
It’s the first Cizeta V16T and the only one badged Cizeta-Moroder V16T. Moroder’s name was dropped from the later cars after the two fell out. Complex to build and dogged by delays, only around 10 Cizeta V16Ts were eventually built before the company went bust.
Claudio Zampolli died in 2021, but you can see Giorgio Moroder talking about his car in the video. “We wanted to create a car for the tough guys,” he says.
Even up against Countachs and Testarossas, Diablos and F40s, the Cizeta had tough guy written all over it. Its 6.0-litre V16 produced 540PS (403kW) at 8,000rpm, delivered to the rear wheels via a five-speed manual gearbox whose top ratio would, it was said, take the car past 200mph. Zero to 62mph was a claimed 4.0 seconds. The massive engine was mounted transversely behind the seats, giving the car its huge girth either side of the signature intake strakes.
For 33 years Giorgio Moroder kept the prototype, taking it out of storage for restoration in 2018. Today it is said to be fully functioning – as well as just as spectacular looking as it was 30 years ago.
A supercar relic of a pre digital age it may be, but RM Sotheby’s is selling it with a very digital twist: the car comes complete with an NFT (Non-Fungible Token) which includes a Giorgio Moroder four-track music EP, a 3D artistic rendering of the car in collaboration with digital artist “Soulajit,” a 3D scan of the car and digitized provenance.
Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.