Top Gear teases it’s exclusive first drive of the Porsche 918 prototype
This is just cruel. Porsche 918 supercar is more than a year away from showrooms but Top Gear Magazine got an exclusive test drive with the first production prototype and chose to share the experience with us… in words:
We’ll have the full story in the next issue of Top Gear Magazine. But here’s the executive summary for all you time-poor internauts.
The performance headlines are this. Acceleration from 0-62mph in ‘less than three’ seconds. Zero to 125mph in a time that almost matches a Bugatti Veyron. And a Nürburgring lap time (so far verified only on Porsche’s supernaturally accurate simulators), of 7.22. That’s 10 seconds faster than the old Carrera GT, and 10 seconds, to the sort of people who obsess on ‘Ring times, is an entire geologic era.
The point is when the V8 gets cracking. It’s a 4.6-litre job that revs to 9000rpm and makes a crazed 570bhp. Where the concept car had its air intakes - just behind and above your head - the real car has its exhaust tips. It sounds beyond awesome. Even though in my ride they were rev-limiting it, the noise was bouncing around my cranium for hours after.
And then, on top of that, there are the front and rear electric motors. In the ‘race hybrid mode’ their power is amped up so that between them these electric motors make 270bhp, which is more than the flat-six of an original 911 Turbo.
I guess we’ll have to wait for the magazine. In the meantime we’ve posted sketches of the production 918 above. For more detail on Top Gear’s ride, click this here link.
- 2 months ago
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