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Porsche 918 Spyder configurator goes live

That didn't take long. The debut model of the new Porsche 918 Spyder is still thronged by onlookers at the Frankfurt Motor Show, while the German sports car maker is hard at work putting the first version of the supercar's configuration page online. Considering Porsche configurators are some of our favorite time-wasters of the genre, we expect car-guy productivity to drop by a few percentage points over the rest of the day.
So, the 918 dream-maker doesn't list and prices as yet, and that's too bad. But considering the car is due to start off at $845,000 in the US, chances are good that unless you're reading this from the shallow end of your Uncle Scrooge-spec money pool, the cost of any part of the 918 is academic to you anyway.
To start, Porsche is offering twelve paint colors, three wheel choices and seven two-tone interior treatments. Standard lightweight bucket seats and a set of chairs with "firmer padding" are on offer, too. The options list is mostly populated with interior bits, though many - an anti-reflection interior, fire extinguisher, six-point seatbelts - are racing-oriented or functional. Note that Porsche is also kind enough to offer just one cupholder as an optional extra; the unit is made of aluminum and is detachable so that you won't have to carry the extra weight during racing. Also, Porsche probably puts you on some kind of naughty 'list' if you order one...

McLaren boss' exclusive Porsche 935 Street is worth three 911 Turbos

McLarens may be exclusive, but there are still hundreds - if not thousands - of people out there who can say they own one. Mansour Ojjeh is one of them, but he doesn't just own a McLaren - he owns McLaren. As in, the company that makes the racing and exotic supercars. Or 25 percent of it, anyway. As the head of Techniques d'Avant Garde, Ojjeh is one of the British outfit's largest shareholders, previously having owned Heuer watches (before selling it to luxury giant LVMH) and engineered Porsche's most successful foray into Formula One - winning the world drivers' championship three times in a row and the constructors' title twice with Alain Prost and Niki Lauda behind the wheel of McLarens with Porsche engines developed and branded by TAG.
In short, he probably could get any McLaren he wanted at the drop of a hat, but also had strong ties to Porsche in the 80s, and this is the car he wanted. It's called the Porsche 935 Street, and it's the only one ever made. Inspired by the 935 racer that won Le Mans and over 120 other races, Ojjeh contracted Porsche Exclusive when it was still in its infancy to make him one for the road. So they took a 930 bodyshell, slotted in the 3.3-liter turbo flat-six from the 934 but cranked output up to 375 horsepower, and gave it the brakes, suspension, BBS wheels and wide-body aero from the 935 racer. They painted it a deep metallic red and trimmed the interior with cream leather and wood veneer.
When all was said and done, a total of 550 modifications were performed, detailed on a seventeen-page invoice and costing as much as three new 911 Turbos at the time. Ojjeh only put 12,000 miles on the odometer, running up and down the French Riviera, and has now put it up for sale at the upcoming Bonhams auction at Spa where it's tipped to fetch upwards of 300,000 euros - equivalent to $410k at today's rates, or, once again, the price of about three new 911 Turbos.

Mysterious Porsche 911 Cabriolet spied, could be GTS

While Porsche's designers can jokingly be accused of being some of the laziest in the industry due to the incremental changes to the 911's iconic design, no such charge can be leveled against the engineers and product planning folks. That's because it seems like each week arrives with news of a new variation of the marque's iconic rear-engined sports car. So, for this week, we've brought you images of what we think is the new 911 GTS Cabriolet, undergoing testing in a thawing winter wonderland.
Now, what is it that gives this 911 away, compared to standard convertible? Well, the big thing is the new offset, center-mounted exhausts. Borrowing a page from the last Volkswagen R32, these exhaust tips are unlike anything we've seen from Porsche. Only the GT3 wears center pipes, and unlike these spy photos, the twin pipes on the track-minded 911 are stacked neatly alongside each other. The other change spotted by our spies is the set of active-aerodynamic flaps in the front bumper, which can automatically channel air toward the brakes for increased cooling, or close off to reduce drag, as needed.
Those exhausts are a pretty big design detail, and so far as we can tell is the only differentiator between the other 911s in this car's posse. Our spies speculate that this could be a 911 Speedster, but point out that both the canvas roof and windshield remain unchanged - the rumored Speedster model would almost certainly feature a different roof assembly along with a steeply raked windshield.