For years, we've heard that the petrol was all but dried up and that electric cars were coming to take our souls.
From where I'm standing, though, it seems like the internal combustion engine has never been in ruder health.
In just the last five years, we've been blessed with the likes of the Aston Martin Valkyrie, a Cosworth V12-powered Le Mans racer for the road; the Porsche Cayman GT4 RS, with a transcendental 9000rpm flat-six mounted in the middle; and the GMA T.50 which is effectively the McLaren F1 reborn, albeit with a 13,000rpm V12, to name a few high-watermark moments.
Earlier this year, Ferrari announced yet another front-engined V12 grand tourer: the inventively-named 12Cilindri. That's '12 cylinders' in Italian for the dimmer readers out there.
Arguably the most beautiful front-engined car to wear the prancing horse in the last fifty years, the 12Cilindri comes with a naturally-aspirated 6.5-litre V12 that revs to an eargasmic 9,500rpm.
Even Bugatti, a brand now part-owned by the Croatian EV-evangelists at Rimac, has unveiled its latest 16-cylinder hypercar with the Tourbillon. More glorious than that is the switch to an all-new V16 engine, rather than rolling out another rehashing of the complex W16 first seen in the Veyron almost 20 years ago.
The petrol engine ain't dried up yet. Let's enjoy it while we can.
