Porsche reveals pre-production 918 Spyder

A simple tweet from Porsche, and a picture: "The latest production version of the Porsche 918 Spyder at Monterey Motor Week". 

UPDATE: It's not quite the final production version: Porsche clarified this with an further tweet: "The image of the 918 Spyder is the latest pre-production version. The production version will be unveiled at Frankfurt."

Still, we've seen it as a render, half-built and with special livery; heck, we've even driven one (as you can read below). But this is the first time we've seen an un-camouflaged, near-as-dammit, road-going version.  

Top Gear drives the Porsche 918 Spyder

A quick recap then, if you permit: it's Porsche's top-dog hypercar, going up against the LaFerrari and McLaren P1. It's a hybrid, too, sporting a race-bred 4.6-litre naturally-aspirated V8, producing 608bhp, together with a 149bhp electric motor on the rear axle, and a 129bhp electric motor on the front axle.

That's right, it's a four-wheel-drive electric-hybrid Porsche hypercar, producing a total of 886bhp (that's almost 100bhp up from the original estimation). It revs to 9150rpm, it'll hit 0-62mph in under three seconds, go from 0-125mph in under eight seconds, top out at 202mph, and emit just 70g/km of CO2.

Cost? The prototype TG drove a few months back weighed in at £726,000 with the optional Weissach pack, so it's quite a fair sum of money. But then you are getting an extraordinary bit of kit. A very TG sort of science project.