#Porsche918

TTAC reader Casey Parkin sent us these shots of a Porsche 918 at a dealer training event. It will be a long time before TTAC gets their hands on one of these, at least someone was kind enough to give us a better look at the car.

Self-reported times on the Burgerkingring have long been the accepted currency of keyboard-racing morons, which has led to an increasingly bizarre series of manufacturer-sponsored “assaults” on the track. Real racers know how worthless the times are, but real self-funded racers only come in two categories: broke-ass dudes running a Neon ACR (yo!) and zillionaires racing Daytona Prototype. The two groups combined buy supercars at approximately the rate of two teenagers in Dubai — and teenagers in Dubai do care about Ring times.

Thus, we see that Porsche is now reporting a 6:57 for its hybrid supercar. This breaks the six-minute mark for self-reported times of factory-prepared “production” cars, ending a very long time where the fastest times were in the sevens. To see how it was done, click the jump.

Porsche has released the final, official data on their hybrid supercar, the 918, developed alongside of the car the the company will be racing at LeMans in 2014. The 11,000 word press release has everything you could possibly want to know about the 918, plus the new 911 Turbo as well as the rest of Porsche’s presence at the Frankfurt show, which focuses on the 50th anniversary of the 911. The 918 is powered by a 4.6 liter V8 gasoline fired ICE, dry sumped and mounted behind the cockpit, that puts out 608 hp, along with three electric motors that combined produce 286 hp, giving the driver up to 887 horsepower at his or her discretion (there is, apparently, a loss of 7 hp somewhere in full power mode). Performance is rated at 2.8 seconds for 0-100 kmh (0-62 mph) and 0-200 kmh in only 7.7 seconds. The 918 is a plug in hybrid, with a recharging time for the 7 kw/h lithium-ion battery of 4 hours on Germany’s 230 volt AC mains. Fast DC charging is said to take 25 minutes. If you want to, you can even get a speeding ticket while retaining green cred, top speed on electric power alone is 93 mph. Electric-only range, though, is limited to 10 to 20 miles per charge. Porsche is claiming 85 to 94 miles per gallon, but that probably isn’t when doing 0-62 kmh runs.

Though development versions of the Porsche 918 hybrid supercar have been spotted testing in Colorado, California and other locations, and though we’ve seen concept and track versions, until now Porsche has not given the production car its official public debut. Last weekend, with the eyes of the car enthusiast world aimed at the event, Porsche couldn’t have picked a better location or event for that debut, racing the 918 up the hillclimb at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Fortunately, a British car blogger named Tim aka Shmee, who does great video work with cars, had cameras stationed along Lord March’s famous driveway to record the new debutante’s coming out party.

We’ve yet to see a production-spec 918 Spyder on an auto-show display, but if the latest pricing report is accurate, many would-be buyers might want to take a look at the alternatives in the market — such as a sack containing more than thirty pounds of gold bullion, or a nice solid early Beechcraft King Air.

We would also like to point out that importing and/or driving a vehicle with the Martini Racing design film package on public roads could have legal consequences

Now that Porsche has that humdinger of a disclaimer out of the way, they’d like to sell you one of the 918 examples of the 918 Spyder. Preferably one with the Weissach Package. No, not the Weissach Edition. The Weissach Package. As in, you’re going to have to start taking Marlo’s package on your corner so you and all your hoppers can live long enough to buy an example of this fine sporting hybrid.

In case you have surplus cash sitting around, doing absolutely nothing, hang on to it until the end of 2013. This is when Porsche finally wants to crank up production of its Über-Porsche, the 918 Spyder. Porsche has finished the initial prototypes, which are cleverly camouflaged: If you see something whizzing by, and you think to yourself: “This looked just like a Porsche 917 race car,” then you actually saw a 918 in drag.