Porsche 918 Spyder

Michael Mauer's studio, with Hakan Saracoğlu on the exterior, did what concept cars rarely survive: the 2010 Geneva show car and the 2013 production 918 are recognisably the same object. The wheelbase, the low blunt nose, the flying buttresses and the hard cut across the rear deck all carried through. The two details that give the car away are functional. The exhaust exits on top of the engine cover immediately behind the seats, because routing the pipes up and out of the V was shorter, lighter and cooler than running them under the car. And the roof is two carbon panels you lift off by hand and stow in the front luggage compartment, which is why this is a Spyder rather than a coupé with a sunroof. Inside, the console climbs towards the driver the way the Carrera GT's did, the clearest link between Porsche's two hand-built flagships. Weissach cars go further outside, with bare carbon where the standard car is painted. It is not a beautiful car the way a Carrera GT is beautiful. It is a compact, purposeful one, and it has aged better than the drawings suggested it would.

The 918 never raced, and there was nowhere to put it. GT rules wanted production volume and a conventional drivetrain, and Porsche's own prototype department was already building the 919 Hybrid for Le Mans. What the 918 has instead is an engine with a competition record on both sides of it. The 4.6-litre V8 came from the RS Spyder, the LMP2 car that won the American Le Mans Series LMP2 title in 2006, 2007 and 2008, beat the entire field outright at the 2008 12 Hours of Sebring, and took LMP2 class wins at Le Mans in 2008 and 2009. Porsche detuned and re-engineered it for the road, kept the dry sump and the top-exit exhaust, and put it behind the seats. The same engine then went back to work. Porsche's 963 prototype runs a twin-turbocharged development of it, coded 9RD, and Porsche Penske has won the Rolex 24 at Daytona with it in 2024 and 2025 and taken the IMSA GTP title in both years. The closest thing to a race result of the 918's own is 4 September 2013 at the Nürburgring.

The 918's cultural moment is a video. The onboard from Marc Lieb's 6:57 lap went out alongside the Frankfurt show car in September 2013 and did what lap records used to do in print: it handed people a number to argue about for the rest of the decade. After that the car mostly appears in threes. The Grand Tour's first episode in 2016 took the 918, the P1 and the LaFerrari to Portugal with Richard Hammond in the Porsche. Every magazine comparison, drag race and forum argument since has used the same cast, and the 918's role is fixed: the sensible one, the one that works in the rain, the one still running at the end. In games it arrived late and stayed. Forza has had it since the Horizon 2 and Motorsport 6 Porsche packs, and Gran Turismo 7 finally added it in an update in July 2022. A generation of people who will never sit in one have driven it, which is roughly what a poster used to do.

By hypercar standards the 918 is the easy one. It was built as a Porsche first and a technology exercise second, and owners use them the way they would use a 911 Turbo, which is not something anyone says about its 2013 rivals. What needs attention is what is always live. The high-voltage system wants regular charge cycles, and a car left standing for years is the one that raises questions about pack health. Software glitches in hybrid operation exist and are resolved with dealer updates rather than parts. Recall work is well documented and mostly ancient history now. Rear-axle and front lower control arms on 2014-built cars, and a rear radiator fan wiring harness that could chafe against a heat shield, were all put right under recall. The carbon-ceramic brakes reward warming up properly and punish cold, hard track use. Body panels and bespoke systems come from Porsche in small numbers and sometimes to order, so nothing is quick. None of it is frightening. This is a car that was engineered to be driven, and the ones that have been are generally the better buys.