Even at nearly 10 years old, the Porsche 918 Spyder stands as the crown jewel of Porsche’s modern cars. It takes everything that was great about the Porsche Carrera GT supercar, and adds an electrified twist. Its 4.6-liter V8 puts out an already wild 608 horsepower; throw in the two electric motors part of its hybrid drivetrain, and the 918 makes an absolutely unworldly 887 horsepower (via Porsche).
That’s astonishing for any car under the sun, but transcendent in a hybrid that only weighs just over 3712 pounds with the optional Weissach package. All that power and it still manages to get 22 combined miles per gallon (via Edmunds). Other cars are rendered tired and obsolete just by the existence of the 918 Spyder.
New, the car had an MSRP $845,000. Production ended in 2015, with 918 cars built in just two years, making it an extremely rare car. Auction examples tend to hover around $1.5-2 million. With all that power on tap, and the assistance of a hybrid drivetrain to boot, one would expect the 918 Spyder to be excessively fast. But just how fast is Porsche’s pride and joy?
Sporting ‘catapult-like’ acceleration
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Before the Lucid Air and the Tesla Model S Plaid dominated headlines for breakneck acceleration, there was the Porsche 918. Porsche described the 918’s acceleration as “catapult-like” in the 918’s official launch documentation. It boasts a 0-60 mile per hour time of just 2.6 seconds. Given its now seven-figure price tag, it seems right that the 918 would put lesser cars to shame.
Even the best EVs in 2023 only beat that time by fractions of a second. For gasoline cars, it’s only beat by the unholy abomination that is the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon and the Bugatti Chiron. The Chiron costs more than an entire neighborhood, and the Dodge Demon looks like a brick trying to break the sound barrier.
The 918 tops out at a brisk 214 miles per hour, beating out its electric nemeses who reach their respective limits at just over 200 miles per hour. While not even remotely “inexpensive” in any sane interpretation of the word, the 918 still punches above its class when it comes to specifications. Running on just its electric motors, the 918 can reach a still-respectable 93 miles per hour (via Porsche), especially for a hybrid.
When the car was new, the car managed to break the then-mythical seven-minute lap record at the Nürburgring Nordschleif track in Germany, with a lap time of six minutes and 57 seconds, according to Porsche.
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Thomas Ramage