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Porsche rolls out new 919 Hybrid at racing gala

That Porsche is returning to Le Mans next year with a top-tier LMP1 entry is no news - we've known that for some time. We've even seen pictures of the car in question undergoing testing at various racetracks across Europe, been told who'll be driving it and given some basic parameters of what will make it go. We just haven't known what to call it, but now we do.
In detailing its full endurance racing program for next year at its Night of Champions in Weissach, Porsche has revealed that its new LMP1 racecar will be called the 919 Hybrid. So, something like the 918 Spyder, only one faster. With a four-cylinder engine and a pair of electric motors, the 919 Hybrid will be taking on the top class at Le Mans next year, with a compelling roster of drivers on the docket: along with Mark Webber, Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas and Neel Jani, Porsche has assigned its works driver Marc Lieb and F1 test driver Brendon Hartley to the effort. But that's not all Porsche has in store.
The factory is also supporting teams that will campaign the 911 RSR in the FIA World Endurance Championship as well as the United SportsCar Championship here in the US, taking Porsche off the pit wall and right in the race seat for next year as part of a comprehensive new racing program, details of which you can read in the press release below.

Porsche 911 spied looking like a Porsche 911

The 2017 Porsche 911 hasn't gone on sale yet and spy photographers have already snapped an early mule for the next-generation 911 due in calendar year 2018. It might be difficult to make out underneath the cobbled-together bodywork of the previous 991-version 911, but this one has a wider rear end that could be hiding the plug-in hybrid powertrain expected to come with the next big model update, perhaps codenamed 992. The strange white plug would be where owners plug the coupe in, according to this patent drawing. There have been rumors of a hybrid 911 coming for more than a year now, with some suspicious bits in a mule seen last year, and early prognostications being that Porsche is lining up the powertrain for the 911 Turbo to produce somewhere around 720 horsepower. That would make sense as the first stop for the learning and components of the 918 Spyder to trickle down to the 911 range. If Porsche migrated the 918's 156-hp electric motor unchanged into the 560-hp 911 Turbo, you're looking at a 716-hp monster that accelerates even more quickly. A hybrid 911 Carrera model would sit above the standard turbocharged engines. Elsewhere, the 992 model will come on the current MMB platform, and the exterior will be one of evolution, naturally. Interior upgrades will include a fully digital instrument panel. Or, going off the reservation, former Porsche chairman Matthias Muller said earlier this year that, "the high-speed high-tech laboratory of the 919 Hybrid will benefit all our future vehicles" in reference to expanding the Porsche model line to seven models. At the time, Bloomberg wondered if Muller was referring to the long-rumored Ferrari competitor Porsche has debated.

The hottest modern sports cars rendered as rally racers

The modern-day World Rally Championship a monumental amount of fun to watch – I should know, as I recently was lucky enough to head to the UK to watch WRC Wales Rally GB – but even the most monstrous of the current WRC cars are based on fairly pedestrian European hatchbacks. Back in the heyday of rally, the Group B era in the 1980s, much hotter cars were the basis of even more incredible competition machines, for the most part. Take the exotic Ford RS200, or the Lancia Delta S4 with its twin-charged engine. And the hatchback-based Group B cars were bonkers, too. So what would some of our favorite modern cars look like if Group B had never ended? A British site named CarWow hired an artist to reimagine everything from the Rolls-Royce Wraith to the Porsche 911 as a retro-inspired rally car, and they were kind enough to let us share the results in the gallery above. The gallery features an Alfa Romeo Giulia in Martini livery, an Audi TT in classic Ur-Quattro colors, a Fiat 500 Abarth sporting massive flares and a hood blister full of auxiliary lights, a new Ford Mustang in RS200 livery, a Lancia Delta in Alitalia colors, a Porsche 911 in Rothmans livery, a Renault-Alpine in classic blue, a Rolls-Royce Wraith tribute to the Jules cologne Corniche Coupe, and a relatively modern-looking VW Touran. So far, the favorite around the office is the incredible Mercedes-Benz S-Class that is an homage to the wonderful 300 SEL 6.8 AMG "Red Pig" that essentially put AMG on the map. Check out the gallery above and see which one you like the best. Related Video: