The Good
Alright, before we get started I must confess that this Good section is motivated purely by my own personal interest in this particular car. That being said, it is a pretty sweet @%$#ing car.The 2014 Porsche 918 Spyder is due lurch into production at exactly 9:18 a.m. on September 18, 2013. Oh, and they will limit production to 918 cars a year. Strange, I feel like there is some sort of pattern there... Anyways, this thing is going to be all sorts of nuts. The performance figures on this beast are pretty titanic, but more on that in a moment. First, I would like a mental round of applause for Porsche for FINALLY making a car that doesn't look like a clone of... Well, of every other Porsche that has ever been created. Let's be honest here, if you took every Porsche in the current line-up and looked at them from the front you'd see that THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME. The 911, the Boxster, the Cayman, the Panamera, even the Cayenne all look like five identical twins (with the Cayenne being the fat one). Not since their last super-car effort, the Carrera GT, has Porsche managed to make car that truly looks unique.Low, lean and mean, with just a hint of Ferrari thrown in, the 918 Spyder is a delight to look upon. Now the figures. The 918 Spyder clocks a 0-60 time of a tad less than three seconds thanks to a 770-bhp electric hybrid engine. You read correctly, my friends, an electric-hybrid super-car. This power comes from 4.6 liter V8, aided by two electric motors and a lithium-ion battery layout. All of this for the reasonable price of $500,000. So you get super-car performance when you want it, and gas mileage that rivals many current family sedans when you don't. In short, a car that even a tree-hugger can drool over.
The Bad
Some things in life are best enjoyed by themselves. A Wagyu steak for example, or a glass of 1787 Chateau Lefite. These things were meant to be rare and valuable and exclusive, a stand-alone paragon in their respective classes. Much like the forth-coming 2015 Acura NSX. Acura has long been in need of a car that brings a little life to their family-oriented (and quite frankly rather ugly) lines of upper-middle-class family sedans. Hence the NSX, a $100,000, 400 hp shot of wild fun that one would think would become the new thoroughbred for Acura. Alas, as with many things, Acura has decided to muddle the gene-pool by announcing that they intend to release a "Mini-NSX" sometime around 2017. This Mini-NSX will only cost around $60,000, and will most likely have a spirited 3.5 liter V6, and is by no means ugly. However, that is not the point. The Mini-NSX just takes something away from the exclusivity and glamour of the big-boy NSX. It's like opting to buy your wife a necklace made from the finest costume jeweler around when you could have (and probably should have) bought her that rare black-pearl necklace she has been wanting. Sure it is a work of art in it's own right but... It just isn't the same. I can't help but wonder why Acura didn't just hand the plans for the Mini-NSX over to Honda and let them resurrect the brilliant S2000. After all, Honda could use some color in its lineup as well.
The Ugly
There is no way of putting this gently, dear readers. The United States Congress wants to go all Patriot Act on you and your automotive driving habits. Bill S. 1813:MAP-21 will most likely be passed into law sooner than we would like it to be. Essentially the bill would make it mandatory for all cars in the United States to have an Event Data Recorder as a standard feature. The EDR is much the same as the infamous "Black Boxes" that commercial airliners and helicopters have in them. for those of you unfamiliar with the Black Boxes, they are nigh-indestructible little computers housed in nigh-indestructible casings (aka Black Boxes) that take all of the data from your car's various sensors and computers and commit that information to memory. Congress states that this is to aid law enforcement in accident investigation, but let's not be kidding ourselves. This means that the Black Boxes can be used to see where you have driven, how long you've stayed at a given location and many other such privacy-hindering details. Of course, for now, this information can only be viewed by the authorities if you get yourself into an accident, but who knows how long it will take before on-board Black Boxes become a government version of the Apple user agreement (if you don't understand that reference, I highly encourage you to read it). The full synopsis of the bill can be read here, and a more entertaining version from our friends at Jalopnik can be found here. And remember, Big Brother is watching you!
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