With the last of the 450 Bugatti Veyrons having been unveiled at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show, this would be as good a time as any to remember what is probably the main reason behind the supercar's enormous success: it's 16-cylinder engine. Bugatti->ke16 isn't the first – although it will probably be the last – to fit a 16-cylinder powerplant in a production car, but it was the first to use a W-16 configuration.

If you ever wondered how the W16 monster is built, Carscoops recently came across an older YouTube video of the assembly line in Molsheim, France, where each of the 450 Veyrons were hand-built, including their powerplants. The footage was most likely taken closer to the model's launch in 2005, which is why it's probably not as glamorous-looking as you would expect. The most interesting part is probably around the 2:30 minute mark, where you can see that cylinder no. 3 was initially tagged with a different number.

Essentially composed of two W-8 engines united with a single crankshaft, with each four cylinders being fed by a turbocharger, the W-16 powerplant delivers between 987 horsepower in the original Veyron->ke1112 and 1184 horsepower in the Veyron SuperSport. Despite using a good deal of aluminum and titanium parts, the sheer size of the engine translates into a weight of around 900 pounds. With the seven-speed, dual-clutch transmission adding another 550 pounds or so into the equation, you can probably see why the Bugatti Veyron is such a heavy car.

Bugatti Veyron