The March '14 issue of Car and Driver landed in my mailbox today. An interesting story on the Porsche 918 is contained within. Base price is $847,795. I said "Base"...

Did you know that Porsche offers an extra-cost Weissach Package that "strips out sound insulation, replaces leather with Alcantara, dumps cooling for the passengers...and otherwise cuts weight by 90 pounds"? Sound familiar, in part, to the Z/28 preparations?

CO$T? Well, "if you have to ask"...it's only $84,000. But it does include the special Weissach wheels which, as a free-flow option, would otherwise be $32,500 (and NO, they're not platinum-plated)...or $8,125 each...

Or, for the same $84,000 at the Porsche Palace, you can ADD 4,400 pounds...by purchasing a nicely-optioned 2014 Cayenne Platinum Edition...you know, for those crappy days when the 918 should stay indoors...BUT genuine platinum plating is STILL optional...

So I'm sure over on the Porsche forum there are pages and pages of whining about that.

GT3 owners are probably bitter and are complaining that the 918 isn't THAT much faster... and may not be at all faster if you ran the same tires on the GT3. And even if the 918 is faster it certainly isn't +$600K faster and think of the track car you could build for almost a million dollars.

Regular Porsche owners are most likely upset as well because the Porsche was always the car for rich guys... but now this new one abandons the merely wealthy in favor of the uber-rich. A slap in the face to the loyalists for sure!

And without question the forums are lit up with crying about the $84K cost to take stuff out of the car! There are, I am sure, post after post about the speculative costs of each 918 component and how that balances with the cost of stuff they are leaving off and how no way that equals $84K. I'll bet someone even mentions that for the cost of taking stuff out of the 918 a person could buy a brand new Z/28 and have money left over.

Finally, it is a sure bet that the butt hurt (those who can't afford one) are predicting that they will sit on lots unsold because, hey, they are just not worth $850K and people will just go out and buy a Mclaren instead.

Or not.

I'm fairly certain no one @ Porsche is anticipating REBATES to unload unsold very limited production 918s. They'll tailor production to meet demand...

...just like the Z/28...

:clap:

...gotta get the Z/28.R's up and going, lets see what the next round brings.