To answer your questions, YES, the link wheel still works, but only if you do it right, I mean, it all depends on the quality of your link wheels.
A properly built link wheel, will take more time (and/or money) to build but the results will be up there, you'll get increased keyword rankings and also indirect traffic from the link wheel sites, and contrary to popular belief, if you build it right, google will not be able to spot it and you'll be penalty free.
If you plan to build a link wheel, I would recommend you to read all the resources at linkwheel.pro before you start building one.