Porsche 918 Spyder 2015 Review

Sold out, left-hand drive only and not able to be driven on the road Down Under, Porsche’s 1280Nm petrol-electric 918 Spyder super-hybrid is irrelevant… Unless you want to experience the full R&D might and expertise of Porsche and understand exactly where the future of performance cars is headed.

It’s cliched but little prepares you for your first steer of a hypercar – especially one as revolutionary as Porsche’s 918 Spyder.

At the same time it’s essentially raw and yet mechanically refined. It’s beyond race-car fast but eco-car silent. It’s totally unintimidating to drive in its mildest modes and yet feels like a ticking air-fuel weapon when the blue touch paper is lit.

After all, how many road cars can you name that would justify a 911 Turbo and 911 GT3 as its warm-up acts? Oh, and a full-on Carrera Cup racer as its chase car.

That our drive took place at one of the world’s great pieces of bitumen, the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit, makes the experience even more surreal. This is not a road test, it’s a stream of consciousness layman’s testament to the engineering nous that seems to burst from the seams of Weissach, Porsche’s R&D home base.

The raw numbers of the 918 are mind numbing. Almost 900hp (652kW) delivered by a combination of two electric motors and a 4.6-litre naturally aspirated V8 that owes its existence to Porsche’s LMP2 sports car racing program.

It will accelerate to 100km/h in a maximum of 2.6 seconds; 0-200 km/h comes up in the same time it takes a hot hatch to do the regulation sprint. Top speed is 345km/h. Porsche’s own test drivers have lapped the Nurburgring in 6:57.

At Phillip Island, even with yours truly tentatively guiding the car to the advice of global 918 Chief Instructor Mattias Hoffsuemmer (in the right-hand seat, the 918 is left-hand drive only), it keeps a Carrera Cup lead car guided by Porsche old hand Craig Baird squirming around on its slick rubber.

You have to back pedal on the main straight to make sure you don’t get too close to the race car.

Hoffsuemmer and Baird could likely set a production car record at the Island -- with a figurative arm tied behind their backs. Indeed, the former easily recorded lap times in the 1:38sec range – within around scant seconds of the V8 Supercars and Porsche Carrera Cup lap records, and three seconds quicker than we timed one of the fastest road cars around there, the Mercedes-AMG SLS Black.

Technical tour de force is a hackneyed over-used and over-wrought phrase yet it’s exactly what this car is… Mattias’ favourite epithet is that in electric and hybrid modes even your grandmother could drive the 918. In the former, Porsche claims, she’ll be able to do that for 31km, accelerate to 100km/h in 6.1 seconds and roll-on to a top speed of 150km/h.

Porsche claims fuel economy is theoretically in the 3.0L/100km zone. As a two-pedal car, all you need know and do is press the right one, and go! Hard.

Roll through 150km/h in e-mode out of the pits at the Island and the engine kicks in but you hear and see it (via the tacho) rather than feel any lurches or impact. The refinement of the processes via which the 608hp petrol engine joins the party is hard to relate. Were all commuter hybrids with one quarter the power so well integrated…

Systems integrate the flow of power from the mid/low-mounted battery pack first to the motor sandwiched between the V8 and the seven-speed PDK twin-clutch gearbox which powers the rear wheels.

Then as higher levels of commitment require, the front motor chimes in to provide the surety of all-wheel drive. Well, as much surety as any chassis and stability control system can guarantee when taming 650kW-plus and 1280Nm.

A key part of the recipe is the chassis design. A carbon-fibre monocoque delivers race car levels of structural strength and the design mounts the engine, 6.8kWh lithium-ion battery pack and motor infrastructure so low that Porsche claims the 918’s centre of gravity is lower than its wheel nuts. In truth that’s probably true of a few cars, but it’s a great line to make sure people are paying attention.

In addition to regenerative power, the 918 has huge 410mm diameter race car sized ceramic composite brakes. In my drive I hardly used them in anger. What was clear, however, again, was the integration of re-gen and old-gen stopping power. There’s none of the switch-like characteristics some ‘e-heavy’ vehicles exhibit.

My drive of the supercar from the future was limited to just four laps of the Phillip Island track. Enough to know I’d like more, but equally enough to know there’s no way I’d ever be able to do justice to the performance the 918 offers. While I felt my warm-up laps in the GT3 did the car justice, the same couldn’t be said of the 918.

Steering is pure and direct but not fulsome in feel like some mid-engined cars or even some lesser (older) Porsches. But it’s unerringly direct.

The balance of the car errs on the side of safety – prudent, I’d suggest. given its performance potential. It’s not as ‘pointy’ as the 911 GT3, for example, and demands a little extra attention to make sure you ‘plant’ the front-end and Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 semi-slick tyres with a little weight transfer, lest it run a little wider than you expect.

In auto mode, the gearbox is happy to change up and down undirected and in response to your right foot. You must select manual mode via a button on the lower left quadrant of the steering wheel.

In its most aggressive Race mode changes occur in 50 milliseconds. That’s half the time of the standard mode and faster even than the 80ms change the PDK performs in Sport mode.

The gear-change is experienced less as an interruption of power and more an alteration of the volume behind your right ear.

The top-mounted exhausts spit flames on a big down-change or a lift, Porsche people enthuse… The grim-faced engineers soberly state the design was chosen to shorten the tract and reduce back-pressure, but also to separate hot pipes and heat sensitive electrical components.

That said, that’s the sum total of the powertrain generated ‘drama’ the 918 delivers – it’s remarkably quiet and not just in e-mode. Run-of-the-mill Lamborghini Gallardos will turn more heads by ear than this hypercar. And I’d suggest that’s exactly how the result-driven engineers at Porsche’s HQ like it.

Porsche Australia offered Aussie enthusiasts the option to purchase a 918 Spyder as a track-only package when the car was first announced. Just five were available to Aussie buyers at $1.5m each including track days and maintenance and storage packages. No local buyers took up the option. Porsche cites the $300K-plus of luxury car tax as the main reason buyers rejected to offer.

While the subject is now moot (Porsche has sold out its total production run), I’m not so sure that’s was the real objection.

Such is the 918’s technical and visceral appeal, I couldn’t imagine owning one and not being able to drive it when and where I wanted to…

What we liked:
>> Amazing technical achievement
>> Stunning speed
>> Looks and street presence

Not so much:
>> Sold out and LHD only
>> Really???
>> No, seriously, really???

2015 Porsche 918 Spyder pricing and specifications:
Price: $1.5m (see text)
Engine: 4.6-litre V8 petrol, twin electric motors
Output: 652kW/1280Nm
Transmission: Seven-speed twin-clutch automatic
Fuel: 3.0L/100km NEDC Combined on 98 RON
CO2: 72g/km
Safety Rating: Not tested