If you’re a fan of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, you’ve certainly had at least one fantasy of operating or even owning a prototype. If you purchase a vintage racer, you can do that, but an iconic vehicle will cost you millions of dollars. However, a Porsche 919 Hybrid is now more affordable than a base-model 911.
How is it possible for a car like the 919 Hybrid, which has three Le Mans victories, to be this affordable? The vehicle that was driven at Circuit de la Sarthe was more of a show vehicle than a true race vehicle. It’s true that you can’t drive it because it lacks a drivetrain, but it still makes a cool display piece.
Porsche also constructed 13 non-running exhibition cars when it first began competing with the 919 Hybrid in racing back in 2014. These were created for exhibition at various events as advertising materials. If you’ve ever seen a 919 at a car show, it was probably a 1:1 scale replica that wasn’t actually running and not the real thing.
Between April 21 and April 29, one of these 13 vehicles will be auctioned off by RM Sotheby’s. Additionally, the auction house predicts it will bring in between EUR 80,000 and EUR 120,000. According to the current exchange rates, that amounts to roughly $94,300 to $141,500. It could thus get around town for less money than a Porsche 911 Carrera, which starts at $99,200.
Sure, that’s still a lot of money for a car you can’t drive, but if you have a large garage, it makes a great showpiece. If you’re one of those people who would park a car in his living room, it’s also the ideal example of automotive artwork. Naturally, assuming it is large enough.
The 919 Hybrid that Earl Bamber, Nick Tandy, and Nico Hulkenberg drove to victory in the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans wears the same black-and-white striped livery as this particular exhibition car.
In 2014, the Porsche 919 Hybrid made its racing début, marking the brand’s 15-year comeback to premier prototype racing. The 919 Hybrid, which was powered by an energy recovery system and a 2.0-liter V4 engine, participated in the World Endurance Championship from 2014 to 2017.
From 2015 to 2017, Porsche won the series three times in a row, winning three 24 Hours of Le Mans races in the process. Porsche now has 19 overall Le Mans victories, more than any other automaker to date, thanks to the 919 Hybrid.
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Be still, my beating a**, that is an absurd price to pay for a diecast, especially considering that it is roughly equivalent to the price of a full-sized Fiat 500, Ford Fiesta, or, with some negotiating, a Chevrolet Cruze.
What exactly would this deadly attack on your monthly credit card statement consist of? One benefit is exclusivity, as they will only ever be 100 created. The 919 Hybrid won all but two of the World Endurance Championships it competed for between 2014 and 2017 (Porsche placed third in both the Drivers’ and Manufacturers’ standings in its first season), which is an appropriate, if slightly bizarre, tribute to one of Porsche’s most popular sports cars.
Porsche Will Charge You $14,689 for a 1:8 Scale 919 Hybrid.
Porsche is currently asking $14,689 for one-eighth size replicas of its triple Le Mans-winning 919 Hybrid LMP1 prototype, but supplies are running low.
The expensive variant is available for purchase on Porsche’s website, where it is noted that just four of the limited edition of 100 units remain. 96 have thus far been sold, according to this. For comparison, a 2018 Kia Rio retails for $13,900, making this more expensive than a brand-new vehicle. However, given the list of amenities on the 919 model, it is simple to comprehend why a multimillionaire would spend that much money on a scale model.
According to Porsche, the model’s accuracy is to the tenth of a millimeter. It was built using a combination of high-tech machine tools and skilled artisanship, just like full-size prototype cars. All of the paint on the model is manually done, and even the tiny metals are made of pewter or aluminum. Porsche claims that a tiny model-making team put in 3,000 hours of effort total to create the models.
Each of the 100 automobiles may be opened up, with the doors and engine clamshell removed. Each includes a display box with a numbered plaque and the autographs of a few of the 919’s drivers—possibly Romain Dumas?
If you’re a Porsche nerd with more than $4,000 to spend on a vehicle you can’t operate, you’d better act quickly. The 919 Hybrid Evo’s record-breaking lap at the Nurburgring suggests that the four remaining vehicles won’t be on the market for very long.
Infiniti QX56 hybrid
The Porsche 919 Hybrid is a Le Mans Prototype 1 (LMP1) racing vehicle that Porsche built and utilized in the FIA World Endurance Championship’s 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 seasons. It has two separate energy-recovery hybrid systems to recover thermal energy from exhaust gases and convert kinetic energy into electrical energy under braking for storage in lithium-ion battery packs. It also has a two-liter (120 cu in) 90-degree V4 mid-mounted mono-turbocharged petrol engine that produces 500 hp (370 kW) and serves as a chassis load-bearing member. The automobile was classified as belonging to the 6 MJ (1.7 kWh) category in compliance with the 2014 rules.
During the Geneva Motor Show on March 4, 2014, the 919 Hybrid was unveiled to the press for the first time. Six drivers used two Porsches that were provided for the season. Timo Bernhard, Brendon Hartley, and Mark Webber all contributed to the team’s third-place result in the World Manufacturers’ Championship while Romain Dumas, Neel Jani, and Marc Lieb won three pole positions and the season-ending 6 Hours of Sao Paulo.
The vehicle underwent additional development in 2015 and was assigned to the 8 MJ (2.2 kWh) category. The World Manufacturers’ Championship and the World Endurance Drivers’ Championship for 2015 were won by Bernhard, Hartley, and Webber after winning four of the eight races. Driving a third 919 Hybrid, Earl Bamber, Nico Hulkenberg, and Nick Tandy triumphed in the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
After further development, Dumas, Jani, and Lieb’s car won the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 6 Hours of Silverstone in 2016. The three earned the team’s second World Endurance Drivers’ Championship in 2016 because to their consistent efforts. Despite having reliability concerns in the first three races of the season, Bernhard, Hartley, and Webber were able to help Porsche win the World Manufacturers’ Championship for the second time in a row by winning four of the final six races.
The next year, in 2017, Jani was joined by Tandy and ex-Audi LMP1 driver Andre Lotterer in place of Dumas and Lieb, and Bamber collaborated with Bernhard and Hartley to take the place of the late Webber. In the first two races, Porsche came in third place. At the last race of the season, the 2017 6 Hours of Shanghai, Bamber, Bernhard, and Hartley overcame a 13-lap deficit to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans and three additional races for Porsche’s third consecutive World Drivers’ and Manufacturers’ Championships.
The 919 Hybrid project was put on hold after 2017 as Porsche entered Formula E. In 2018, an automobile evolution known as the 919 Evo was displayed.
The Porsche 919 is road legal, right?
Porsche is providing the public with a unique look behind the curtain at what goes on in the ultra-secretive world of its design studios as part of a brand-new coffee table book titled Porsche Unseen. The 328-page book, which includes 15 never-made and never-seen concept automobiles from 2005 to 2019, is incredibly magnificent and offers an intriguing look into the company’s design studio, which is currently run by Michael Mauer.
The Porsche 919 Street, created in 2017, the year Porsche retired its racing equivalent from service, is without a doubt one of the stars of the book. The 919 Street, as its name implies, is a street-legal version of the 919 Hybrid, the company’s all-conquering endurance racer, and it “promises to make the exhilarating driving experience of the LMP1 [the top-tier endurance racing category the 919 Hybrid competed in] race car available to amateur drivers.”
Porsche intended for the 919 Street to have the exact same dimensions as the race car, the same 900 horsepower hybrid drivetrain, and ostensibly also include a street-legal version of the racer’s glorious turbocharged two-liter V4. Unfortunately, the 919 Street never advanced beyond being a full-sized clay model.
The Mercedes-AMG One, an F1-powered hypercar from its Stuttgart rival that is currently having a difficult pregnancy, is reminiscent of the 919 Street. But more significantly, if it were built, the Porsche 919 Street would be only the second race car in recent history to get a road-legal version.
Porsche last did so in 1998, when it produced just over 20 road-legal versions of its Le Mans-winning 911 GT1 race car to comply with racing regulations in effect at the time. It was known as the 911 GT1 Strassenversion and resembled the 919 Street in appearance but without the sponsor badges.
In any case, now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag, it’s likely only a matter of time before fervent Porsche enthusiasts begin ferociously pushing Zuffenhausen to produce one.