Car:Porsche 918 Spyder

  
What is the car all about?

Introduced a car version of the Porsche 918 Spyder which is, the art of understatement is evidently not lost on the good people. Quietly under-promising and then spectacularly over-delivering is a sure-fire way to produce very satisfied customers. Always has been; always will be.

It has worked a charm for Stuttgart’s sports car specialist for decades and continues to with the (whisper it) incredible 918 Spyder. The word ‘hypercar’ doesn’t appear anywhere in the press kit for this car – not on Porsche’s website or in any of its promotional material.

Here is a car with hybrid-carbonfibre construction, a combustion engine and suspension set-up donated by a prototype racing car, and a petrol-electric ‘plug-in’ powertrain the likes of which the world has never seen.

 

Its ancestors are some of the greatest production and motorsport cars in history. From a conceptual point of view, the car is a descendent of the Carrera GT, the mid-engined supercar launched a decade ago. Before that, there was the street-legal version of the 911 GT1 built in tiny numbers during the 1990s.

Porsche’s use of plug-in tech in cars is much more recent. Only the Panamera E-Hybrid precedes the 918 in series production, although Porsche has spent the past few years dabbling in Williams-developed KERS systems for racing cars.

Don’t believe it. The 918’s plug-in hybrid concept may make it a different ownership proposition from its million-pound rivals but, as you’re about to read, it’ll match them and more – on speed, grip, soul and thrill – in its wilder moments. Here’s how.

Laying eyes on the 918’s evocative styling puts an emphatic end to any argument about the car’s intended stature. Rather than be slavishly functional, the shape of the car’s carbonfibre-reinforced plastic bodywork pays homage to just about every important racing Porsche of the past half century. The 917, 935, 906, RS Spyder – all are acknowledged in places. You don’t do justice to cars like that by setting out with qualified commitment to the performance cause.

Neither is this car the product of lesser ambition. It may weigh almost 200kg more than a McLaren P1 – 1740kg on MIRA’s scales – but its lithium-ion battery is twice the size of the P1’s (6.8kWh), its electric motors supply much more propulsive assistance, and the car has 50 per cent more overall torque. There's no option on wheel sizes – it's 20 inches on the front and 21 inches on the rear by default

The 918’s underbody consists of a stressed monocoque tub and attached engine carrier subframe made entirely of carbonfibre-reinforced plastic. The body panels and doors are CFRP, too, the bumpers flexible polyurethane. So the car is both necessarily heavy but about as light as it could possibly be.

The suspension and engine are both adapted from what you’ll find in Porsche’s 2005 RS Spyder race car. That means a 4.6-litre V8 made of aluminium, titanium and steel is mounted midships, developing 599bhp, revving to more than 9000rpm and weighing just 135kg. Suspension is by forged aluminium wishbones and links, with PASM adaptive dampers as standard. The electro-mechanical rear-steer system from the ‘997’ GT3 also features.

The electrified portion of the car’s propulsion system, meanwhile, consists of one permanently excited electric motor per axle, producing a maximum 282bhp and 431lb ft of torque between them. While the rear motor-generator drives through the same PDK transmission as the combustion engine, the front motor drives via a single speed and are deliberately under-geared to run out of revs and decouple at 165mph. But not before it has contributed to the crankshaft-equivalent of 944lb ft of peak torque, as well as 874bhp at 8500rpm. Top speed is 214mph. EU-tested CO2 emissions are 70g/km.

The 918, then, probably has more power than a 2015 Honda-engined F1 car, and yet it emits less CO2 than a Honda Insight economy saloon. Also offered is the Weissach Pack. Adding 10 per cent to the price of a £780k hypercar for a weight-saving options package made up primarily of deletions from the car’s standard equipment looks, on the face of it, like profiteering. But Porsche has learned from the criticism that it received about the Cayman R and will allow you to pick and choose the bits you want to keep and to remove from your 918 if you do commit to the Weissach Pack.

And there aren’t only deletions but also glorious substitutions to consider. Ceramic wheel bearings save only 700g over steel ones but you’ll want them once you know they’re on offer. Magnesium alloy wheels are the biggest individual weight saving on the list (14.9kg). Among the smallest are carbonfibre shift paddles (200g) and leather loop interior door openers (200g).

Interior - Porsche 918 Spyder

The Porsche 918’s simplest distinguishing sales advantage compared with rival highest-echelon performance machines is given away by its name: Spyder. You can unclip its two CFRP roof panels easily, stow them in moments in purpose-built slots in the under-bonnet cargo compartment, and enjoy all the refreshing benefits of driving in the open air.

You expect a slightly tricky entry routine to the low seat and you get it because of the shortness of the door aperture, and the need to fold your knees up under your chin before swinging your legs in. Conventional doors make for less kerbside theatre than scissors or ‘wings’, but are a more sensible solution in day-to-day use. This isn't the world's most wieldy car, but frontal visibility is okay and there is a reversing camera.

The fascia is dripping in carbon and neatly sectioned off into two zones: a primary one for driver controls grouped around the steering wheel; and a secondary one dominated by the rising ‘black panel’ centre console reminiscent of the one from the Carrera GT. This division brings perfect clarity to the ergonomic layout, but you have to get used to it. The gear selector is not on the transmission tunnel but just behind the right-hand shift paddle. Likewise, the drive mode selector – sited on the tunnel in other Porsches – nestles on the bottom-right quadrant of the steering wheel.

The secondary systems are navigated via two colour information screens: one portrait, at the head of the centre console; and one landscape, recessed into the upper fascia above it. It’s a clever combination because the screens are flexible enough to be configurable. So you can have the sat-nav mapping up top and music tracks down below when cruising long distance, or a power flow meter and a trip computer function on display when out for a blast. Either way, you seldom need to change mode to see the information you need.

The quality and function of systems is top-notch as well. The mapping is typically detailed and clear, and the Bluetooth phone easy to pair up and clear. Despite being a Weissach Pack car, our test example had the Burmester audio, with its 600-watt output and surround-sound functionality. It sounded as potent as you’d expect. But the 599bhp V8 sounds better.

Rich, obvious material quality goes hand in hand with wonderful technical sophistication in here and the effect is more intoxicating than in a P1 or LaFerrari. The 918’s cabin, like so much else about it, an appeal as much for what it is as what it does. And given what it does, that’s no mean compliment.