The heir of the 917 is the 919, but what of the Porsche 918?

We all know about the fabulous Porsche 917 and we now know a fair bit about the Porsche 919, (even if we are not nuclear scientists and don’t fully understand how on earth it works). So what happened to the Porsche 918?

At least amongst their more esoteric machinery Porsche don’t cop out by simply calling them a ‘911’, regardless of how it might have evolved since the ‘60’s, instead they give them numbers which are the factory reference codes. The 2014 Le Mans entries are listed as 911RSR despite the Manthey cars being different from the Team Proton 911RSR. If you are 'of a certain age' you will recall various other 911RSR models over the years. So why not call this a Porsche 991RSR too?  Porsche did pop back to Le Mans in 2008 to win LM P2 with the Penske Porsche RS Spyder, and hardly broke sweat! 

Anyway, back to the sensibly described Porsche 918. We saw the emergence of the  Porsche 918 Spyder ‘plug-in’ hybrid at the 2010 Geneva Show. It came as a bit of a surprise but Porsche didn’t hide the fact that they planned to put the car, in some shape or form, into production. As a result of some serious customer interest official production plans were confirmed last summer. In the US the price on the screen was a mere $845,000. But if you want one hurry up because there will only be 918 built.

Image: Porsche AG

The 918 Spyder is of course a hybrid, Porsche wouldn't be spending all this money on promoting hybrid technology if they thought they were wasting their time. The engine is a 4.6 V8 that traces its ancestry back to the 2008 Spyder RS racers. It has been house trained to make it more durable and user friendly and it pushes out over 600 bhp at a modest 8,000 rpm ( the red-line.. if you are feeling bold.. is at 9,150 rpm.) Add to that the two hybrid electric motors ( 270 bhp) and you will find that you have about 875 bhp on tap for your trip to Sainsburys.  If it snows you can rely on the fact that like the 919 it is a 4 x 4 with the petrol engine chugging away doing the back wheels and the washing machine engines looking after the front end. Getting this lot organised and getting all wheels turning to order is Porsche’s very own  7 speed Doppelkupplung PDK gearbox. 

What will she do Mister?  Various figures have been published and there is every indication that the figures are ever so slightly awesome. In optional ‘ Weissach’ trim, which sheds 41kg from the 1,674kg kerb weight due to titanium bolts and magnesium wheels, the 918 will hit 60mph in 2.5 seconds, reach 186mph in just under 20 seconds. 

 The cherry on the cake though is always  a lap of the Nurburgring and Porsche tell us that the car was recently confirmed as the world’s fastest globally road homologated car to the lap the Nurburgring! The record was achieved on September 4th, and saw the 887hp German hypercar sprint around the track in just 6 minutes and 57 seconds! Porsche factory race driver Marc Lieb was at the wheel and the final 6:57secs time shaved a full 14 seconds off the Porsche 918 Spyder’s Nurburgring lap time set last year before Porsche embarked on giving it significantly more power.

For some reason McLaren were a bit cagey about what the P1 has achieved as are Ferrari with their ‘LaFerrari’ . What is even more impressive is that the 918 can achieve astounding fuel efficiency with CO2 emissions of 72g/km and fuel efficiency never seen before in a hypercar. Oh yes and they tell us that it stuffed the fabulous Carrera GT’s time by about two seconds ! 

OK, Porsche are back building ‘proper’ cars so we can forgive them for the Porsche Cayenne and maybe even for the diesel powered  Panamera!

Jock Simpson