8 production cars built around a W12 or V16 engine

Most modern engines are shrinking and adding turbochargers, but a handful of production cars went the other way, built entirely around a W12 or V16. Some, like Bentley’s twin-turbo W12, powered luxury flagships for two decades before the engine was retired in 2024, while others, like Cadillac’s 1930s V-16, are nearly a century older. Here are eight production cars that built their identity around a twelve- or sixteen-cylinder engine.

1. Bugatti Tourbillon: The New Naturally Aspirated V16

Bugatti’s replacement for the Chiron pairs an 8.3-liter naturally aspirated V16 with three electric motors, and the combustion engine alone produces 986 horsepower before the hybrid system pushes the total to 1,775 horsepower. Unlike Bugatti’s turbocharged W16 predecessors, the new engine revs to 9,000 rpm and remains in active production, with customer deliveries beginning as Chiron output winds down.

For buyers, that means a car built around a screaming atmospheric engine rather than the low-end torque most modern hypercars favor, at a price near $4.3 million before options, with Bugatti positioning the naturally aspirated layout as a deliberate outlier as rivals lean harder on turbocharging and electrification alone.

2. Bentley Continental GT W12: Two Decades On Twelve Cylinders

Bentley’s Continental GT carried a 6.0-liter twin-turbo W12 for nearly two decades, packing four narrow banks of three cylinders into a block compact enough to fit a coupe, and later versions made up to 650 horsepower. Bentley ended W12 production entirely in April 2024, closing the line out with a limited run before switching the Continental GT to a plug-in hybrid V8.

That makes the W12 Continental GT a finished chapter rather than a current model, and used examples now carry the added appeal of an engine layout Bentley says it will never build again.

3. Bentley Flying Spur W12: A Four-Door Take On Twelve

The four-door Flying Spur shared its 6.0-liter twin-turbo W12 powertrain with the Continental GT, delivering around 626 horsepower in a full-size sedan body that could still top 200 mph. Like its coupe sibling, the W12 Flying Spur stopped production when Bentley retired the engine in 2024, and the current Flying Spur lineup runs exclusively on V8 and hybrid V8 power.

For shoppers, that makes a W12 Flying Spur a specific used-market search rather than something orderable new, with values starting to climb as the last examples work through dealer inventory.

4. Bentley Bentayga W12: The Rare Twelve-Cylinder SUV

Bentley’s Bentayga SUV briefly offered the same twin-turbo W12 engine found in the Continental GT and Flying Spur, making it one of the only production SUVs ever built around a twelve-cylinder engine instead of a V8. Bentley discontinued the Bentayga W12 alongside the rest of its W12 lineup in 2024, and today’s Bentayga range, including the Speed variant, runs a twin-turbo V8.

That leaves the W12 Bentayga a short-lived rarity within an already low-volume model, appealing mainly to buyers who want the engine’s smoothness in a body style it almost never reached.

5. Audi A8 L W12: Where VW’s W12 Began

Audi’s A8 L was the first production car to use Volkswagen Group’s W12 architecture, launching the layout in 2001 before a later 6.3-liter version became the range-topping twelve-cylinder engine for select markets. Audi phased the W12 A8 out years ago as demand shifted toward turbocharged V8s and, later, hybrids, and no A8 sold today offers a twelve-cylinder option.

The W12 A8’s legacy shows up mostly in the architecture it pioneered, which Bentley and Volkswagen kept using in their own flagships long after Audi itself moved away from it, even as the last W12 A8 sedans lingered in China well after the engine vanished from Western order books.

6. Volkswagen Phaeton W12: VW’s Quiet Flagship Gamble

Volkswagen’s flagship Phaeton sedan offered a 6.0-liter W12 alongside V6, V8 and diesel options, an unusual twelve-cylinder choice for a mainstream-badged sedan. Global sales ended in 2016, with the final cars built for the Chinese market, and Volkswagen never replaced the Phaeton with another sedan of its size or ambition.

For VW, the W12 Phaeton is evidence the brand once chased Mercedes and BMW at the very top of the market, a strategy it abandoned once the model line closed for good, and no Volkswagen-badged sedan has offered a twelve-cylinder option since.

7. Cadillac V-16: Detroit’s Depression-Era Flagship

Cadillac’s Depression-era flagship used a 452-cubic-inch 165-horsepower V16, an enormous displacement engineered for silence and smoothness rather than outright speed, at a time when most rivals were still selling straight-eights. Cadillac built the V-16 from 1930 into the early 1940s, long before modern production and safety standards existed, and no version of it survives in any current Cadillac.

Its era-defining status came from cost as much as engineering, since the V-16 arrived just as the Depression made a hand-built sixteen-cylinder flagship an increasingly hard sell, and Cadillac never attempted anything like it again after the run wound down.

8. Cizeta-Moroder V16T: Eleven Built, One Legend

The Cizeta-Moroder V16T packed a transverse V16, essentially two V8s joined at a shared crankshaft, into a Marcello Gandini-designed body originally sketched for Lamborghini. Production ran only through the 1990s, and roughly 11 cars were built before the low-volume Italian company folded, making the V16T one of the rarest engines on this list.

That scarcity means most enthusiasts will only ever see one in photos, and surviving examples rarely change hands publicly, decades after the tiny company behind the V16T shut down for good without ever building a true successor to replace it.