Back in September, one of Porsche’s limited-to-918-units Spyder Hyper-Hybrids burned to the ground in a bizarre gas station fire. Today, we received reports that another of the insanely quick Spyders met its demise in China after colliding with a tree last night. Much like the fire, the images of the crash were captured on a passerby’s cell phone camera and posted online to ‘go viral’. Also in a similar fashion, not much is known about the crash, what caused it, or whether anyone was injured.
The 918 has not garnered the kind of fear-induced respect that the Carrera GT’s Racer-For-The-Street spirit did. The 918 isn’t as hard-edged or unruly, and while fast, all of the reviews say that it’s calm cool and collected until you really put your foot in it. Even then, the car remains easily controllable, just perhaps a lot quicker than most are used to. Judging by the photographs, this doesn’t look like an extremely high speed accident, so did the driver just jam the throttle down with the wheel pointed in the wrong direction?
The damage looks bad enough that it’ll certainly cost the owner’s insurance company a whole lot of money. I doubt that the thing is totaled unless the tub is cracked, and with what appears to be a relatively low speed crash, it’s probably repairable. Certainly the front suspension, the bumper, hood, left fender, and probably a lot of the front cooling system need to be outright replaced. Unless I was up close and personal with the car, it’d be difficult to tell exactly what it needs. Hopefully it will eventually be brought back to life and back terrorizing the streets of China.
Update: A number of new reports suggest that it was a female “friend” of the owner driving at the time of the accident. Perhaps the owner’s girlfriend? Said friend apparently mistook the gas pedal for the brakes and pushed the Spyder into a tree on the streets of Shanghai. And while after close inspection the damage doesn’t appear unrepairable (the air-bags don’t look to have deployed suggesting a low-speed crash) the owner is said to have been overheard suggesting he doesn’t plan to repair the Porsche. Instead he will opt to purchase another supercar and keep this one in his yard as a “reminder”. That’s one expensive reminder.
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