All Original, Including Paint, 914 In Good Shape on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Watch Porsche's 918 Spyder break a sweat while hot weather testing

With five months left until the 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder enters production, Porsche engineers are still putting the hybrid sports coupe through a battery of last-minute tests. To give us new reasons to ogle over the car - as if we needed any more - Porsche has released a short video showing the 918 Spyder undergoing shakedown tests in the hot Nevada desert. And you can't drive through Nevada without visiting Vegas, too, right?
Although there's really nothing new to see in this video, it's still fun to watch as Porsche approaches one million test miles logged on this exciting new high-performance model. One interesting part (at around the 0:37 mark) shows the car taking off under electric power and then transitioning to engine power, which results in a mix of whirs and growls as the 918 Spyder switches from a 127-horsepower electric vehicle to an 887-hp hybrid supercar. Scroll down to watch - and hear - Porsche's latest creation in motion.

Porsche Macan Turbo vs Cayman GTS in track battle

"Well this is stupid." On the surface, that was our reaction to this video, as well. Why would you compare the hottest Porsche Cayman with a crossover of any kind, even if it is the 400-horsepower Macan Turbo?
We're guessing because it'd be bloody good fun, as evidenced Auto Express's latest track battle. To be fair, there is some interesting stuff here. The two do have a similar starting price, separated by less than $3,000 here in the US market. And, factoring in the Macan's hefty horsepower and torque advantages - 60 horsepower and 126 pound-feet - does make for a slightly interesting comparison.
We won't spoil the verdict, so check out the full video from Auto Express, and then let us know what you think in Comments.

Porsche 918 Spyder to birth stretched 2+2 version?

Porsche is known for its ability to spin off a litter of variants from a single model, and according to a report in Automobile the 918 Spyder (pictured here) might not be spared the house trick. Having taken too many brains and too much money for too much time, company chiefs are said to be examining ways to get more for their development euro out of the supercar, and Plan A is apparently otherwise known as Plan 984. That would be a four-seater, rear-wheel drive supercar that uses a stretched mold of the 918's carbon fiber tub, keeping the V8 in the same mid-mounted place and costing around 350,000 euro.
That would be less than half the MSRP of its inspiration, but the details don't sketch out a car that's just half as good. Automobile speculates it would get something like 700 horsepower in order to best the coming 911 GT2, and about 440 pound-feet of torque. The 984 is quite a ways short of being confirmed; even though a full-size study is said to exist, it's like the 918 would need to become a bigger sales hit for the 984 to happen.
The 984's fortunes don't change those of the 960, the supercoupe Porsche is building to challenge Ferrari. Its potential specs haven't changed since the last report in January, power coming from a 5.0-liter, twin-turbo, eight-cylinder boxer engine with something like 650 hp pushing a curb weight of roughly 3,100 pounds. The means a suspected 0-to-60 mile-per-hour time of 2.5 seconds.