The quality and function of systems is top-notch as well. Either way, you seldom need to change mode to see the information you need. 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. It’s a clever combination because the screens are flexible enough to be configurable. 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. Likewise, the drive mode selector – sited on the tunnel in other Porsches – nestles on the bottom-right quadrant of the steering wheel. The gear selector is not on the transmission tunnel but just behind the right-hand shift paddle. This division brings perfect clarity to the ergonomic layout, but you have to get used to it. 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. How many other supercars have a carbonfibre-reinforced plastic bonnet stay, after all? And how many other supercar makers would tell you that it’s worth 500g in place of the normal one? Among the smallest are carbonfibre shift paddles (200g) and leather loop interior door openers (200g).īut it’s the sense that Porsche has left no stone unturned in saving mass - 41kg in all - that really convinces. Magnesium alloy wheels are the biggest individual weight saving on the list (14.9kg). Ceramic wheel bearings save only 700g over steel ones but you’ll want them once you know they’re on offer. 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.Īnd there aren’t only deletions but also glorious substitutions to consider. 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. 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.Īlso offered is the Weissach Pack. But not before it has contributed to the crankshaft-equivalent of 944lb ft of peak torque, as well as 874bhp at 8500rpm. While the rear motor-generator drives through the same PDK transmission as the combustion engine, the front motor drives via a single speed and is deliberately under-geared to run out of revs and decouple at 165mph. 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. 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.Īnd yet, despite all of the above, we are to believe that this isn’t a rival for LaFerrari and McLaren’s P1? Porsche’s use of plug-in tech in cars is much more recent. Before that, there was the street-legal version of the 911 GT1 built in tiny numbers during the 1990s. From a conceptual point of view, the car is a descendent of the Carrera GT, the mid-engined supercar launched a decade ago. Its ancestors are some of the greatest production and motorsport cars in history. 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. 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.
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