Hop onto any car forum these days that deals with Porsches—or, if you prefer the Luddite approach, walk in on a conversation at a Cars & Coffee—and odds are good that, before too long, you’ll hear somebody complaining about the new Porsche 918 Spyder. “They should just junk all that hybrid gear,” these armchair engineers and Monday morning marketing planners say. “It’d be such a better car if they cut out the weight of the batteries and strapped some turbos onto the engine instead.” Or they’ll act like they’re the 918 Spyder’s psychiatrist. “If they could just stick in a manual transmission, crank up the output of the engine, and leave out the gas-saving bits, then they’d really get to the soul of the car.” Or, best of all, they’ll act like they know better than Porsche. “Porsche made a huge mistake making this car a hybrid, they made a huge mistake making it a targa, and they made a huge mistake revealing the car so early. They’ll never sell 918 examples. It’s a huge flop, and they don’t even know it.” Well, personally, I'm starting to get a little irritated with all these folks bitching about the 918 Spyder—and the perceived flaws of a car nobody has even driven yet in final form. I know, I know, everybody's entitled to his or her opinion...but so am I. And unlike most people on the Internet, I’m paid to express my opinion every now and again. All those folks complaining about the 918 Spyder’s apparent flaws—the plug-in hybrid powertrain, the trick rear-wheel steering, the PDK transmission—are missing the point of the car. The 918 Spyder is a supercar, not a street-legal race car. Supercars aren't necessarily about the rawest possible driving experience—they're about being loud (visually and sonically), fast, and outrageous. And they're also a chance for car companies to show off the technologies they plan on using in the future.

Porsche is basically using the 918 Spyder as a development program for the technologies of tomorrow's "ordinary" Porsches. Yes, it's silly to demand that a limited run of less than 1,000 supercars conform to emissions standards when Ford sells 650,000 F-Series pickups every year in the U.S. alone. But Porsche isn't developing performance hybrid technology just for the 918 918 Spyder owners; it's for the hundreds of thousands of people who will buy Panameras and Cayennes and 911s and Caymans and Boxsters in the next decade. And on that scale, saving fuel and cutting down on emissions starts to make sense. Supercars aren't just sports cars for the super-rich. They're proving grounds for the sports cars of tomorrow for everyone else, too. Just ask the 959. This isn't to say I'm one of those people who thinks people who want a "raw driving experience" are Luddites who need to join the modern day, mind you. I'm still pissed that Porsche isn't offering a stick shift on the new GT3 and Turbo. Two of my favorite cars are the new Shelby GT500 and the Scion FR-S, specifically because they're so raw, direct and uncultured. I love a pure sports car that minimizes the distance between vehicle and driver. But that's not what an $845,000 Porsche should be. That's what the GT2 and GT3 and Cayman R should be, but not the 918 Spyder. It should be what it is—a technological wünderwagen that advances the state of automotive performance by any and every means available. That includes lightweight construction, advanced materials, clever packaging, active aerodynamics—and yes, even batteries and electric motors.

Because there are some distinct performance benefits to electric motors. They fill in the lower end of a high-revving engine's torque curve astoundingly well—which is what LaFerrari and the P1 use them for, too. They provide instant supplementary power without the lag of a turbocharger or the energy drain of a supercharger. They can be recharged by the act of driving itself, unlike nitrous oxide, and can save wear and tear on the brakes by absorbing and reusing some of that stopping energy. Porsche has built a car that weighs 3,700 pounds, yet can still lap the Nordschleife in about seven minutes flat, if Walter Röhrl is to be believed. That's astounding. They've made a single car that can drive 15 miles without using a drop of gasoline and blast from 0-60 in 2.8 seconds on the way to a 211 mph top speed. If Porsche stripped all the electric bits out of it, yes, it'd be a few hundred pounds lighter and a couple hundred grand cheaper—but it probably wouldn't be anywhere nearly as quick as it is. At which point, we'd be asking, "Why pay $500,000 for this car when a new 911 GT3 is just as fast and just as fun for a quarter of the price?" Cutting it down to the proverbial wheel, motor and stick shift would produce a car that wasn't nearly as fast nor as flexible as the 918 Spyder (or P1 or LaFerrari). It wouldn't lap the 'Ring in seven minutes with Jesus behind the wheel, let alone Walter Röhrl. It would be a more involving, more direct driving experience, true. And I'd love to drive the piss out of that car. Until I stacked it into an oak tree. Because that car would be a nightmare to control, unless you were a professional racing driver. And even Zebby Vettel wouldn't be able to go as fast on a regular road in that hypothetical Porsche as he would in a 918.

Besides, most supercar owners will never come close pushing the car as hard as a racing driver, or even some true blue hoon like you or me. Because most supercar buyers are not like us. They do not want the rawest, rarest, most untamed driving experience. They will never push their cars to 10/10ths in the turns, never take them on track, never intentionally balance on the knife's edge between controlled oversteer and uncontrolled ohcrapisteer. They want a car that accelerates like a bat out of hell, draws attention like a Jessica Alba nip-slip, can take a corner really hard that one time every few months when they're showing off for their friends, and can win every bench-race a jag at the hotel bar can throw at it. And yes, there are a lot of supercar buyers out there who don't care how much gasoline their cars burn. But there are also a lot of supercar buyers who are very public people with very public perceptions they want to maintain and egos that require adulation (or self-esteem issues that mean they react poorly to disapproval), for whom the idea of a plug-in hybrid supercar that looks amazing, is incredibly fast and gets 50-90 mpg while cruising through Beverly Hills is a very appealing car indeed. Porsche is not staffed by idiots. We wouldn’t trust them if they were. They made a GT3 RS, they made a GT3 RS 4.0, and then they turned out a 991-series GT3 without a stick shift. They clearly didn't do this in a vacuum. They talked with their engineers and conducted interviews with buyers and thought long and hard about it. And they went with a choice that made the car both faster, more efficient and easier to use, even knowing that it would piss people off. And that was just with a 911 variant that’s pretty cheap to build once you’ve got the 911 assembly line turning. Imagine the time, energy and deep thought they put into making a run of 918 unique cars that cost $845,000 a pop. The 918 Spyder is what it's supposed to be: a supercar. Supercars aren't supposed to be entirely logical. They're supposed to be wild, expensive, fast as hell...and futuristic. It should be packed with every high-tech go-fast weapon a car maker can legally and financially cram under its shapely skin. And that's just what Porsche has done with the 918 Spyder. So instead of griping and groaning about how you wish it was a million-dollar Cayman with a 700 horsepower V8 or the second coming of the 911 GT3 RS 4.0—stop, take a breath, and appreciate the electromechanical magic, the uncompromising pursuit of performance, the melding of environmental responsibility and earth-shattering power that is the Porsche 918 Spyder. Then shut up.

After years of teasing and tempting us, the Porsche 918 Spyder will finally enter production on September 18th, 2013. But the looming launch date doesn't mean Porsche needs to close the tap on their steady stream of media updates. In fact, Porsche has just given us our best look yet at their entrant into the Supercar War of 2013.

Ego. If your mom and dad were like this humble writer's, they probably taught you that ego is generally a negative thing. As you get older, you start to realize the value of having a healthy one—but you also learn the value of keeping it in check. Suppress it too far, you wind up a pushover. Let it grow too large, though, and you wind up naming buildings after yourself. Or building one-off supercars with gonzo styling and room for only one person—oh, and that nobody else will ever get to drive.

Photography: Andrew Link

The following article is presented in two parts. 'Cause we classy like that.

Sometimes, things just go so right. Like, say, being pulled aside at the New York Auto Show a month ago to be invited up to Monticello Motor Club to check out Aston Martin's Vantage-based GT4 race cars. Like the weather finally remembering it’s supposed to be spring and delivering up a cloudless 75-degree day. Like finding out that not only will you be able to ride around the track in said Aston Martin race car, you'll also be able to drive it. Not right away, of course. Race cars are finicky things, requiring a lot of T.L.C. between laps. Tires must be checked, noise levels measured, napalm-grade fuel shunted into the tank. Better-known journalists with bigger audiences must go first. So you wait. You watch. You lean up against the Armco like a trackday Tom Sawyer and watch the black Aston you’re gonna drive tear past over and over again, spitting out a roar like God after He stubs His Toe. Until your time comes. The Aston pulls into the garage—a stealth fighter covered in corporate logos—the doors pop open, and your coworker scrambles out, grinning and sweating in equal measure. You pull on your balaclava, jam the helmet on your head, and - if you're like me - grumble under your breath as you try to finesse, finagle, and finally force your glasses onto your face through the helmet's gun slit. But once they're on, it's into the Aston. Not the driver's side, not at first; the club’s pro driver has first crack, to show you what this thing is capable of. He tells you his name is Corey. As you introduce yourself, a technician who is almost certainly not paid enough reaches between your thighs like one of the Hustler Club’s finest to hook up your five-point harness. Corey tells you he's been doing this for 16 years, which impresses you. Then he tells you he started when he was four. Suddenly, you’re feeling rather insecure. And old. Corey winds the Aston up the road to the entrance to the north track; the marshal waves him on, and he punts it. It's the speed he carries through the corners, the impossible way the car tracks straight and level through bowline knot bends without a note of protest from the tires, that startles you. Every turn sends your helmet slamming into the sides of the racing seat, every hard shift sends it back into the headrest. A spec Miata makes the mistake of being on the course at the same time; Corey slices its line in two on a tight right turn, jumping in front of it en route to what the speedo says is an 185 kph top speed on the back straight. 115 mph. (It seemed faster at the time.) The two warm-up laps wind down, and Corey brings the car back to the. An awkward clamber from the passenger's seat is followed by an even more awkward climb into the driver's seat - complete, again, with the stoic technician fumbling around near your junk. But finally, the belts are on, the steering wheel in place, the door closed. It's time to drive a goddamn race car. Turn the key to on. Pull the red nipple on the dash that starts the flow of fuel. Press the glass Start button. The V8 lives. Push the button for reverse. Follow the technician's directions to back out - the sight lines are only slightly better than the view out of a submarine. Pop the car into drive, and purr up the hill to the track. This seems easy enough. The paddles control the gears; just don't downshift too fast, Corey says, or else it won't shift at all. Oh, and don't hit the brakes hard enough to engage ABS. Up pit lane now; the marshal gives the go-ahead, so you punch it in second gear. The mighty roar is all but muted in the cabin, inside the helmet, but you know it's there, the way you know the moon is yanking on the seas. The Aston picks up speed with linear fury, but honestly, you've accelerated faster. A McLaren MP4-12C, a GT-R, even a CLS63 AMG or a Corvette Grand Sport - they all build speed faster, if the seat of your pants is as a reliable calculator. And then you hit the first turn, and you realize why this thing is a race car. The grip seems absolute, body roll absent. Cones along the track indicate where to point the car’s blunt nose; just look, point and squirt. Corey flashes hand signs like a Navy SEAL, indicating when to downshift or hit the brakes. The first corners pass by slowly. You’ve seen what the Aston Martin can do in the hands of a professional, but you’ve spent more time on the john in the last month than you have on a track in your life, and you don’t want to be That Guy who stacks the six-figure race car because he thought he was better than he was. Everybody in the auto journalism world knows That Guy. Nobody likes him. But once the back straight rolls into view, you mash the throttle to the firewall, and unleash the thunder. Up to the top of second—bang—shift. Up to the top of third—bang—shift. Towards the top of fourth…the braking point is coming up fast…why the hell didn’t Aston put a red line on this damn tachometer, brake brake BRAKE… You turn harder, you brake later, you push the gas pedal further. The rear end goes squirrely for a fraction of a second before the traction control catches, suddenly making clear why Aston Martin elected to keep it on for the journalist test-drives. You’d bet good money that somebody would have spun it by now otherwise. But it wouldn’t have been you. No, you know that for sure as you power through the turns on your second lap, onto your third, and then into the last one; as you kiss 110 mph at the end of the back straight; as you wind through the final turns at what feels like the knife’s edge of control, hands spinning, eyes scanning, synapses firing as fast as that glorious-sounding V8. And just like that, it’s over. Corey signals to pull into the pits and head to the garage; you flick on the blinker, downshift to second, and pull off the track and onto the access road. Hands trembling as the adrenaline ebbs from your blood. It hits you that you’re incredibly warm, and the air you’ve been breathing is thick and stale. “What’d you think,” Corey asks? You give it a second. “That’s one hell of a job you’ve got there,” you reply, aiming for John Wayne-like understatement. Pull into the garage. Put it in park. Turn the ignition switch and kill the fuel. The crew opens the door; twist the harness loose and scramble out. You pull off the helmet—and, sure enough, you’re wearing a shit-eating grin. Sometimes, things just go so right.

-Will Sabel Courtney

__________________________________________________________________________ Going into turn one at Monticello’s North course I thought it would be faster. Granted, I have driven other, faster, cars before so knowing what kind of thrust large amounts of horsepower can provide is nothing new, but The Racing Group (TRG)'s Aston Martin Vantage GT4 didn’t provide that initial “What did I get myself into?” scare. Uphill into the first turn I was asking for more grunt. The initial startup procedure offers a reminder that yes; this is a racecar that demands strict operating guidelines in order to fully realize it’s potential on track, and avoid an ill-fated mistake. Fuel pump on, buttons pushed here and there, key twisted, then one of the most satisfying sounds to a gear head, that turbine sound of the starter turning over the motor that usually comes from an Aston Martin and the je ne sais quoi it produces. But when it comes to racing, horsepower isn’t the only thing that matters and even horsepower doesn’t guaranteed winning. The Vantage GT4 gets by with a thing that has produced results ever since racing was a sport: Grip. You associated racing with speed, and granted they usually have tons of it, but without grip they’d be victims of gravity’s harsh tendency to not forgive. So with almost 300 kilograms (roughly 660 pounds) shaved off the road-going Vantage the tires have the innate ability to produce loads and loads of grip, one thing that can overcome speed. Being a little hesistant through turn 1, I brake way too early—the four-piston monoblock calipers matched to steel rotors provide tremendous, fade free braking—and I have to power through the turn 50 feet before reaching the apex. It’s not the most traditional racing line, but I get a feel for the capabilities of the car quickly. Most noticeably, rotation under throttle lift is direct and predictable, even if you come into an apex a bit too vigorous and have to lift, the car will follow the steering with no complaints. It’s a nice reminder that you have multiple ways of getting from A to B. Using the road-going Vantage’s six-speed automatic transmission with torque converter, shifts aren’t dual clutch quick, but they are violent—imagine being hit with a football in the head with Drew Brees QB’ing. You’ll never mistake a shift, but after repeated laps, I feel like the brute force would wear you down more quickly than in competing cars. By the third lap I’m really starting to get into a braking, turn-in rhythm so I figure the time is right for more throttle towards the exit of the turn, however, due to traction-control (I thought his was a race car!) I’m severely limited to how much power I can put down. By all accounts, the local hot shoe who was providing hot laps for orientation would’ve been 200 feet ahead by the time the Aston actually started putting full power down. I understand why the “insurance switch” is on there (considering they allowed five journalists with no track time in the car drive) but it would’ve been exciting to see the difference. Not having a writer stack an Aston racer is definitely TRG’s prerogative for the day. Another quirk that kept me from ultimately going as fast as nerves would have allowed was the extremely low seating position. I’m 5’8” and I could barely see out of the front screen. Low center of gravity, I totally get it but this was almost unnecessarily low. Not seeing the apex on certain turns is not only sketchy, but really discomforting. After the allotted five laps I was starting to become quite comfortable in the car, the learning curve is subtle enough to wring out some fairly fast laps within the first few minutes of piloting the car. However, this is still a race car and it still demands not only mental ability but physical endurance, something which takes years of practice and the willingness to put this before family, friends and free time. Seriously, it’s not easy. Yes, these cars can only be afforded by the wealthy or the truly talented who are lucky enough to get sponsors, but you get money from being a hard worker and that dedication is what it takes to squeeze the most out of the GT4. Sure, you can buy anything with money but you cannot buy skill and dedication to a sport, which requires an insane amount of skill. The Vantage GT4 is the perfect stepping stone for the few that can get in one.

-Michael Crenshaw

Leaders live and die, empires rise and fall, and sports teams hop from city to city, but three things in life remain constant: death, taxes, and the Porsche 911 Turbo tacked in poster form to the bedroom walls of teenagers across the globe. And from the looks of it, the 991-generation 911 Turbo aims to keep that tradition going strong.