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It wasn’t long ago that Porsche was seriously considering a supercar to fill the (wide) gap between the top 911 and the previous 918 Spyder hypercar. Rumors of a flat-8 engine and the 960’s name (potentially designating the car as a successor to the 959) even surfaced.
The rumors turn out to be credible as a Porsche executive recently revealed that the automaker has developed a prototype mid-engine supercar powered by the flat-8.
Marcos Marques, currently Porsche’s project manager for e-fuels, told The Intercooler (via Motor1) in an interview published last week about the car, which he says features a twin-turbo 5.0-liter flat-8 engine developing 750 hp and torque 738 lb. -ft of torque, revved to 9,000 rpm, and coupled to a manual transmission. While it’s not as powerful as the 918 Spyder, which makes 887 hp and 940 lb-ft from its 4.6-liter V-8 and a trio of electric motors, it sounds like a purer driving experience.
Porsche built a prototype based on the Cayman chassis and did some road testing, but then abruptly terminated the project. In the interview, Marques said Porsche felt “it wasn’t the right car at the time,” adding that the sudden cancellation of the project was simply engineering.
Living Legend Porsche 904 (2013)
“We are an engineering company at our core and we are always looking for new answers, different solutions, and sometimes those answers just aren’t needed at the time,” he said. “But it’s all part of the engineering process.”
This is far from the only supercar idea that has been dumped from Porsche in recent years. The automaker in 2020 revealed a number of secret concepts, including road versions of the Le Mans race-winning 919 Hybrid, and the 904 Living Legend (shown here), a tribute to the 1960s 904 Carrera GTS. It’s worth mentioning that some versions of the 904 used the flat-8 engine.
A true 918 successor is likely to come at some point, but Porsche CEO Oliver Blume said in 2021 that it might not arrive until after 2025. And it might be electric.
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