Porsche 919 Evo To The Nurburgring: 'I'm Your Worst Nightmare'

The smack talk continues.

Last Friday Porsche announced its 919 Hybrid Evo obliterated the Nurburgring lap record with a new time of 5:19.545. In fact, Porsche beat its own record set back in 1983 when a 956, driven by the late Stefan Bellof, lapped the Green Hell in a time of 6:11.13. Nobody thought that time could be smashed, with exception of Porsche apparently. Now that the dust has settled and the car world recovers from the surprise announcement, Porsche continues to push the publicity side of things with this somewhat smack talking video.

It’s basically tells the story of the 919 Evo telling the Nurburgring “I own your ass.” Okay, more precisely the narration says 919 is the ‘Ring’s “worst nightmare” but the context is the same.

That previous record, however, stood for 35 years and it’ll be interesting to see whether the 919’s time will last for that long. Perhaps it won’t, based on the many advances these days of hybrid and battery technology. It may not be too long until something like, say, a Rimac, smashes the 919’s time. Which leads us to this point: Porsche just took a 10 percent stake in Rimac. Coincidence? Probably not.

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These Are The Worst 2018 April Fool's Pranks From Automakers

They need a tough love approach to do better next year.

Yesterday was, of course, both Easter Sunday and April Fool’s Day. While automakers ignored Easter, we received several April Fool’s “pranks” in our email inbox. We opted not to publish everything we were sent because most of these so-called pranks were, in a word, lame. Not even remotely close to believable. Laughably bad is more like it. But you want to see them, don’t you? Of course you do, so here they are. For the record, we want these automakers to do better next year, hence our tough love approach today.

Let’s start with Porsche. It’s done better in past years. Much better. This year it was the announcement of the Mission E Tractor. Featuring Porsche’s new FastFarm App, designed to provide 24-hour satellite-based weather updates, it has a claimed 700 hp and is the fastest accelerating agricultural vehicle in the world. It’s built on the same 800v fast-charging architecture as the Mission E. Is any of this believable? Uh, no. And yet Porsche added this disclaimer: “Dear reader, the editorial team has taken the liberty of having a little fun here on April 1. Of course, the Mission E tractor will not be built.” Really?!

BMW has done better than this for April Fool’s. Much better. Remember the 2011 M3 Ute concept, which was actually built and not some Photoshop hack job? Yesterday, however, we received this: the X2 in a new “Digital Camo” wrap. BMW says this is a full multicolored matte wrapping to highlight the X2’s athletic proportions. It also protects the original paint from damage caused by stone chips. The asymmetrical pattern is made up of dark, grey and light colors. Above all, it’s looks ridiculous. BMW added that the Digital Camo wrap can be applied within four days and prices and availability are only available upon request. Yeah, try doing that at your local BMW dealer. They won’t stop laughing at you. Never.

Did you know there was such a thing as Level 7 autonomy? We didn’t either, but thankfully Fisker made us aware yesterday. Meet the first L7 Autonomous drone EMotion. It’s capable of both vertical and takeoff and landing. Auto park is also included. Fisker added this is also the first “in air” test of its drone powered Fisker EMotion and it can travel up to 10 meters (about 33 feet) off the ground and has a top speed of 75 mph. So it’s like the DeLorean Time Machine without the time circuits, right? Of course it is. Oh, and it can also operate as an autonomous urban air taxi that’ll earn you extra income when you’re not using it.

McLaren announced yesterday it has introduced new measures to increase efficiency. How so? By daily monitoring of the water level in the lake in front of the McLaren Technology Center. Specially-trained staff are tasked with doing so, along with measuring each component of the building itself, including its floor tiles.

Yesterday, Hyundai revealed more of the i30N's “development secrets.” How did engineers manage to tune such a capable hot hatch? The secret is the Cacao Corner, a bespoke surface designed to capture tire prints for dynamic analysis. The corner’s surface is created with a mix of cocoa, butter and milk. We couldn’t make that up.

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