Watch The Porsche 918 Spyder Max Out At 218 MPH

Mar. 03, 2018 10:00 AM ET by Martin Bigg Supercars / 3 Comments

It seems the Porsche 918 Spyder is even faster than advertised.

Hypercars are evolving at a rapid rate, but there was a time when the Porsche 918 Spyder was considered the cream of the crop. Part of the hypercar holy trinity alongside the LaFerrari and McLaren P1, it represented a significant turning point in the industry as supercar manufacturers began utilizing hybrid technology to extract more performance for some of the fastest cars on the planet. Soon there will be a new "lightweight trinity," as the Aston Martin Valkyrie, Mercedes-AMG Project One, and McLaren BP23 will set new benchmarks.

Of course, the Porsche 918 Spyder is by no means obsolete. It's still the fastest car Porsche has ever built, as Johnny Bohmer reminds us in a new video of the hybrid hypercar achieving a new top speed record. The regular 918 Spyder weighs 3,715 pounds, but installing the Weissach Package cuts the weight down to own to 3,616 pounds.

That's enough to trim the 0-62 mph sprint to 2.5 seconds, even though the car's official top speed is claimed to be 217 mph. Bohmer took the 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder for its top speed run on a 2.3-mile runway, where he managed to max the hypercar out at 218.4 mph. According to Jalopnik, that's the world's fastest speed ever recorded in a 918 Spyder. "We were amazed at the insane launch this car performed," said Bohmer. "I mean really quick." Historically, car speedometers aren't known to be 100 percent accurate. Bohmer suspected this was the case with the 918 Spyder's speedometer, so he used a Garmin GPS unit to measure the speed during the 2.3-mile run.

Only 918 examples of the 918 Spyder were made. It may no longer be the pinnacle of performance in the hypercar scene anymore, but it's still very special.

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Tags: #Porsche News #Industry News #Supercars #Video

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