X SPARKS THE SPOT

22nd May 2024

Forget Formula E: thanks to the speed demon of Stuttgart electric cars just got properly real-world thrilling and Ben Barry has it from Porsche’s mouth.

Genuine surprises are rare in the automotive business, but Porsche sprung one to celebrate its 75th birthday – a stunning hypercar called Mission X. It’s only the third Porsche in history to stray beyond the Stuttgart maker’s usual sports car remit, and each of those predecessors – the 959, Carrera GT and 918 Spyder – spectacularly moved the needle on performance and technology, not to mention price.

True to type, Mission X looks set to be the most powerful Porsche production car ever and – the big tech twist – will be powered by nothing but electricity. Pricing should easily break the million-pound barrier.

While officially a concept car, Porsche has already laid down a series of daunting challenges for its engineers should Mission X make production (Porsche’s way of saying it definitely will). Those challenges include setting the fastest time for a road-legal production car on the Nürburgring and achieving charge times roughly half those of the already-quick-charging Taycan, thanks to a super-trick 900-volt charging architecture.

Mission X’s extra-terrestrial design owes more to Porsche’s closed-cockpit Le Mans winners than it does a 911. The bonnet line starts at shin height and rakes up quickly between muscular front wheel arches before flowing into a pod-like canopy significantly narrower that the car itself – the better to reduce wind resistance for a higher top speed and greater electric range. A dramatic teardrop profile then tapers into a rear end as bluff as a sawn-off shotgun. Rather than spoilers, air flows through and under Mission X, pushing and sucking it to the ground.

It is aggressively futuristic yet walking around Mission X those cues from Porsche’s racing past are everywhere.

“At Porsche it’s always tradition with innovation, so we’re looking back but with a clear focus on the future,” explained design boss Michael Mauer to ROX after the big unveil. “We had the Carrera GT, 918 Spyder and 917 Le Mans car in the design studio – that’s the beauty of this company, you basically have your own little museum – but I don’t want to have a retro design, we have basically further dreamed our design DNA.”

The motorsport feel continues inside. Le Mans-style doors open upwards and forwards, inviting the driver to climb over a chunk of carbonfibre chassis and into carbonfibre-shelled bucket seats with six-point harnesses. An oblong, open-topped steering wheel lies ahead, complete with four analogue dials that tailor drive modes and handling characteristics. Rather than an adjustable seat, the steering wheel and pedals move instead.

A racing driver would feel very much at home, but there’s also a sophistication and luxury at play in Mission X that’s absent in hardcore racers – Kalahari Grey leather wraps around the driver’s seat, centre console and dashboard, with the passenger side trimmed in contrasting Andalusia Brown hide.

“It’s important to create the feeling of being in a racing car,” says Mauer, “but if you look at other super hyper sports cars, especially in the interior… these are racing cars, there’s no design, and I think it’s one thing to go on the Nürburgring, but when we started thinking about this car, we had the idea that you can just go through the Alps to Monaco… it’s a little bit about fast travelling.”

Exactly how quickly Mission X owners will be travelling remains unclear, but there are strong clues in that targeted Nürburgring record time, and that Porsche intends Mission X to produce one metric horsepower per kilogramme.

Electric cars are heavier than petrol counterparts, but Porsche promises ‘extreme’ lightweight construction and is investing in lighter, more powerful batteries, so we could well be looking at 1500kg with a comparable 1500 or so horsepower.

It’s a mind-boggling amount of performance, but the bigger challenge is making the all-electric Mission X drive like a Porsche should and ensuring it is a worthy follow-up to three of the greatest cars of all time.

Around four years from now, we’ll know for sure if it does and if it is. And ROX will be first in line…

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