Yahoo Autos 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder Channels the Future
Funnyman Louis C.K. does a widely known bit summed up by a phrase uttered early in the performance: “Everything is amazing and nobody’s happy.” He’s talking about personal technology, but the perspective applies to today’s car industry, too. Take a moment to count your blessings as a car enthusiast in today’s world, and you’ll quickly realize you’re going to need a longer moment.
We have Miatas and BRZ/FR-Ss, GTIs and Focus STs, 300-hp V-6 Mustangs (and 400-hp V-8s), 495-hp Jaguar roadsters, 11-second Mercedes-Benz station wagons, and a handful of exotics (and sometimes even near-exotics) in the 10s. There are also 200-mph sedans, beautiful things, weird things—in short, there’s no shortage of something for everyone. This, plus forums to talk about these things, eBay and Bring a Trailer to buy them, and a mind-blowing generation of video games that let us realistically experience the dreams we can’t afford. Yet the mood in the automotive sphere tends to be a little dreary. We yearn for the good old days or, more often, fear the bad ones to come. Diesels and hybrids and EVs are the future, and they’re going to ruin it all.
Except they won’t, so you can put away your sad trombone. On top of all that other great stuff comes a curious new phenomenon: The million-dollar, 900-hp hybrid hypercar. Want even more evidence that things are going well? In the past decade, several companies have quit making minivans, yet now three different automakers build these insane hybrids. We’ve yet to drive the Ferrari LaFerrari or McLaren P1, but we just clambered out of the Porsche 918 Spyder, and it turns out that hybrids can be pretty awesome.
The Hybrid Ambassador
There’s no family-hybrid-esque Atkinson-cycle four puttering away beneath the 918’s perforated engine cover. Think, instead, high-output V-8 bristling with modern engine technology. Porsche says the engine was derived from that in the Le Mans class-winning RS Spyder, but you really need to stretch the definition of “derived” for that to be the case. In large part, the only commonalities between the RS Spyder’s 3.4-liter and the 918’s 4.6 are that they both have flat-plane cranks and 90-degree vee angles, and saying that 90-degree vees on two eight-cylinders implies shared roots is like claiming you and Billy Joel must be cousins because you both have goatees.
