It’s not just vintage and classic cars that draw the crowds at the annual Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. Luxury car manufacturers also use this important, headline making car enthusiast event to debut new car models.
Porsche is showing off the Porsche 918 Spyder concept plug-in hybrid supercar, just recently approved for production. This is an ultra-high-performance mid-engine sports car that is also a hybrid, with an estimated 94 mpg fuel efficiency, which is about double the mpg of the Toyota Prius.
And the Prius does not accelerate from zero-to-sixty in 3.2 seconds. But, the Prius also costs a fraction of the price of the new Porsche 918 Spyder.
The 918 Spyder was introduced recently as a concept design at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show and at Auto Pekin in Beijing. As often happens with concepts, it was met with such positive headlines by us auto writers and you sportscar fans that Porsche decided to manufacture it.
This will be the second Porsche hybrid. The first Porsche hybrid — the Porsche Cayenne hybrid — is a ‘regular’ hybrid, not a plug in, and it does not get near the estimated 94.1 mpg of this first Porsche plug-in hybrid sportscar . Even with a pricetag reportedly around $600,000, Porsche reports it already has received pre-orders from 1,000 enthusiasts.
Jaguar celebrates its 75th anniversary at Pebble Beach with the North American debut of the limited edition 2011 Jaguar XKR175 Coupe.
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