Build Your Own Porsche 918 Spyder
I know, I should be focusing these 鈥渂uild your own鈥?features on attainable cars. But building unattainable exotics is so much more fun. So aside from the Bugatti Grand Sport Vitesse we featured, this is the most expensive car I鈥檝e ever built online. Porsche has dabbled with supercars for quite awhile. The well known Carrera GT was an incredible car and most fitting of that designation. A quick aside, putting that search term into Google makes for a depressing result. RIP Paul. But that shouldn鈥檛 take away from what was an engineering masterpiece. Porsche is back and right in the thick of hybrid-wars with their new Spyder 918 going against rivals Ferrari and McLaren and their LaFerrari and P1 respectively. This is the upper crust of the automotive world. So how is the new car to build online? The 918 Spyder is not cheap. Like several times your house not cheap.
84,000 get you (besides a base model 911)? In grand Porsche tradition, it gets you less. Less weight in this case, around 100 less pounds through the use of lighter wheels, brakes, and even geeky things like bolts. Weissach is name of the town where Porsche鈥檚 R&D department lives. Ok, if I鈥檓 spending damn near a million bucks, give me the version that has a sub 7 minute Nurburgring lap time, one of the fastest ever and the fastest for a production car. Right, so back to the build. 63,000 so we kept the weight reduction going and went sans paint, instead choosing a film wrap in Martini Racing Design. I鈥檓 sorry, but that鈥檚 just cool, even if I would have preferred a Gulf livery like the 917 racer of days gone by. 0.00. I鈥檒l give Porsche credit, crazy liquid metal paint aside, they don鈥檛 get you on the extras. At least for a 918, I can鈥檛 speak for the rest of the lineup. That about covers the exterior, I was a bit surprised you couldn鈥檛 change the wheel or brake color in the builder. Inside, the interior options were limited to seats, but yet again, they were 鈥渇ree鈥?to modify as you see fit. You can choose between lightweight racing seats or lightweight regular seats that look pretty much the same. 0.00. Nice. As you can see below, the interior isn鈥檛 bad, maybe not quite as dramatic as some of the competition鈥檚. Ok, you get one. That鈥檚 pretty much it. Our 918 Spyder Weissach Package wasn鈥檛 extremely customizable, but maybe that鈥檚 because it鈥檚 perfect already. Any owners out there, looking your way Seinfeld, feel free to comment.
Touted as the 鈥渦ltimate hypercar,鈥?the Porsche 918 Spyder specs are those of the first production-based road car that broke the 7-minute barrier at the legendary Nurburgring. This plug-in hybrid supercar debuted at the 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show and was built from 2013-2015. Each Porsche 918 production number of 918 cars built appears on the hood, as well as in several spots inside the cabin. With an unprecedented combination of performance and efficiency, the 918 Spyder marked the beginning of a new era for supercars. The Porsche 918 Spyder is powered by a combustion engine and two electric motors. When it comes to performance, the numbers are stunning: 0-60 in 2.2 seconds, 0-100 mph in 4.9 seconds, 1/4 mile time of 9.8 seconds and a top speed of 217 mph. All this performance and cutting-edge technology cannot come cheap, though. To blast to over 200 mph, the 918 Spyder relies on a 4.6 L V8 engine and two electric motors. The fossil-fuel-fed Porsche 918 Spyder specs an engine that produces 608 horsepower.
The total horsepower of the 918 Spyder is 887, thanks to the performance boost from the two electric motors. The rear electric motor sends 154 horsepower into the transmission. The second electric motor on the front axle makes 127 horsepower. Without help from the electric motors, the rear-mounted V8 engine, which is derived from the 2005 RS Spyder race car, revs to 9,150 rpm. The combustion engine reaches 398 lb-ft of torque at 6,700 rpm. The rear electric motor features innovative hybrid cooling with air and water. You can鈥檛 easily admire the engine or e-motors, though. As the hood doesn鈥檛 open, you鈥檇 have to take your Spyder to the dealer to take a peek at your Porsche 918 engine. The Porsche 918 Spyder specs an engine mounted so low down that Porsche engineering had to mount the 918 transmission upside down, for better weight distribution. The rear motor runs through the 7-speed PDK dual-clutch, while the front axle electric motor has only one gear.
Surprisingly, the gear selector is a tiny lever mounted just to the right of the steering wheel. At high speed (over 164 mph), the 918 Spyder becomes rear-wheel drive only. That鈥檚 because a decoupler disconnects the front electric motor to avoid over-revving. There are five driving modes: electric, hybrid, sport, racing and Hot Lap. The latter uses full engine power but depletes all electric reserves. The beauty of the system is in the electric motors powering the car between the gear shifts. Obviously, the 918 offers brutal acceleration in any circumstance. A supercar that goes from 0 to 60 mph in a blink needs a matching high-performance braking system. The 918 Spyder has Porsche Ceramic Composite Brakes (PCCB). They have six-piston monoblock calipers at the front and four-piston calipers at the rear. The ceramic discs at the front have a diameter of 16.1 inches. Those at the rear have a diameter of 15.4 inches.