OK, let’s give it the task it was made to
do. A simple steering-wheel switch configures the 918’s systems for hypercar
mode. The V8 engine’s ancestry was in racing, and there’s still a head-splitting
dose of track aggression in its character. In pure numbers – cylinders, size,
power, revs – it’s a dead-ringer for the Speciale’s engine. But, of course, the
918 plays another trick. On top of the 608bhp, the e-motors give (depending on
which gear you’re in) up to 282 more, delivered with a vast dollop of instant
low-rev torque. It’s this torque that makes the 918 drawn so ridiculously
strongly forward. While the Ferrari demands that you’re in deep cahoots with
its rev-counter and gear paddles, this Porsche just goes: whatever, whenever.
If the V8 isn’t at its high-rev best, the e-motors will fill in. And because
the biggest part of that e-torque is at the front wheels and the petrol engine
aims rearward, you’ve got a flatly astounding dose of 4WD traction to catapult
out of a slow corner.
Other
modifications on the Speciale include slightly thinner rear glass, in order to
save weight
And then it goes ballistic. The V8 doesn’t
have the Ferrari’s operatic vocals: it’s a simpler, deeper, harder vowel that
rises in pitch and intensity towards its road-drilling climax, emerging from a
pair of megaphone top pipes just behind your ears, as the car hurls forward.
Faster at the top end than the Speciale? The figures say yes, but keeping
either of their throttle pedals fully depressed on a twisty road is an
experience of such brevity that it’s hard to be coolly calculating about it
all. They’re both barmy, it’s just that the 918 is the barmier.
It has brakes to match, though they’re
better when mashing you into your seatbelt than when you’re trying to finesse a
medium-weight deceleration, when the blending of friction with hybrid
regeneration can be awkwardly calibrated.
In
“Race" mode, the retractable rear wing of the Porsche 918 is set to a
steep angle to generate high downforce at the rear axle
But hey, I always brake the 918 too much
anyway. The cornering grip is huge, with laughably little roll and amazing
agility for a car that’s substantially heavier than the Ferrari. They do that
with four-wheel steering, which turns contra to the front wheels in a tight
corner. This has the effect of quickening the steering or shortening the
effective wheelbase, however you want to look at it. At big speed it turns in
the same direction as the fronts, which stabilises the car. The Speciale’s
wheel gets a little prickly at the high numbers, whereas the 918’s set-up is
right at home on the autobahn. On the other hand, I fancy the 918 doesn’t have the
delicious steering feel the Ferrari has through these second- and third-gear
corners.
You just know how firm the 918’s ride is
going to be when you see how tightly the arches are wrapped around the tyres.
So it proves over slow-speed bumpy tarmac, and yet, as you get up more speed so
the dampers start to breathe and it stops short of being so brutal as to upset
the car or the driver.
The 918 is, then, a cross-country machine
of an effectiveness no other can match. Anywhere.
The
Cayman S’ rear spoiler deploys automatically; it's integrated into the tailgate
We turn onto the autobahn. But this part of
Germany has an overloaded network, and the afternoon traffic is building. It’s
not like the open stretches we had last night. Instead, progress is a spiky graph
of imagination-defying doses of acceleration, even steeper braking, and then a
slightly impatient cruise until the outside lane clears again and we rip up
another heady gulp of delta-v over delta-t.
Which leads us to be parked outside
Weissach, Porsche’s vast engineering mission-control, all square-cornered steel
and glass and white concrete glinting in the afternoon sun. It’s exactly the
sort of place you’d need if you wanted to develop a car of the 918’s ambition.
A machine that doesn’t only seem to use 65-second minutes to get around a
racetrack, but also a car with the technical intrigue and the sheer beauty and
soul to shift your perception of its price from outrageous to proportionate.
Yet the tides of technicians washing in and
out of the Weissach gates seem sated by the 918. Few of them even glance at it.
Given the thrills it has just given me, I can’t imagine ever being able to
ignore so awesome a machine. Maybe these guys need to go on a relay to get
their appetite back.
