This is the Porsche sports car I really want to see on sale. The Vision Spyder harks back to the wonderful mid-’50s 550 Spyder, possibly Porsche’s purest and most beautifully minimalist car. The nose and sills carry ‘551’ badging, making crystal clear it’s the 550’s spiritual successor. Note also the ‘Little Rebel’ plate to salute the most famous 550 Spyder owner, James Dean, whose car was nicknamed Little Bastard. Unfortunately, the 550 Spyder is even better known as the car in which poor Dean was killed, on his way to a race meeting in Monterey, California in September 1955, when he hit Donald Turnupseed’s Ford sedan.
The 2019 Vision Spyder has a similar minimalist two-seat style, is mid-engined and looks wonderfully light: the 550 Spyder weighed just 550kg. Porsche design boss Michael Mauer and I discussed this concept a year ago, just after it was built. He saw it as Porsche’s petrol sports car swansong, before the whole world goes electric. He also said: ‘I’d love to do a pure new sports car like this, reduced to the maximum. I think it’s possible, especially with new materials.’
What a tempting prospect! There was some hard-nosed business logic, too. As the next 718 (Boxster/Cayman) is likely to be fully electric, so the 718’s current platform and its flat-four engine could easily provide the architecture for the ‘new’ 550 Spyder. Alas, I fear the accountants have canned it, as I feared they would, extinguishing my Spyder dream. And Michael Mauer’s. ⊲
Michael Mauer saw this concept as Porsche’s petrol sports car swansong, before the world goes electric
‘I saw a contour line on a layout for the 918 Spyder. It looked like a rear door joint. I was astonished’
MICHAEL MAUER
Dean-referencing graphics in bad taste, perhaps. But a tastefully minimal design
Round headlights, but this is no 911
▲ Incy, wincy spyder
Boxster Bergspyder
This one’s no model: it’s a working prototype Boxster that lost its lid (and passenger seat) in tribute to the Porsche 909 Bergspyder.
That was a ’60s hillclimb special that weighed just 385kg, making it Porsche’s lightest ever racing car. Despite losing roof, screen, door handles and passenger seat, the Boxster Bergspyder is a little chubbier at 1130kg. But a 388bhp Cayman GT4 engine helps matters. Created in 2014, concerns over eligibility in some markets meant it remained a one-o . It now sits in the Porsche museum alongside its namesake.
⊳ The ultimate Cayman concept Le Mans Living Legend
Clearly it’s not just the 550 Spyder Porsche’s designers have pinned to their mood boards. The lesserknown fixed-roof 550 Coupe, which raced at Le Mans in 1953, inspired this study for an extreme mid-engined, eight-cylinder(!) race-inspired sports car on the Boxster/Cayman platform.
It got as far as the clay model stage but its central fuel filler, doors cutting into the roofline and split rear window design were unlikely to see production. Nice to dream, though.
No mates? No worries. Singleseat Boxster cut kilos at all costs
▲ Taycan: (un)seen here first Vision Turismo
From the front it looks like a 918 Spyder. Walk around and, whoa! There are four doors… This study came about when Michael Mauer spotted a contour line drawn on a layout of the 918 Spyder: ‘It looked like a rear door joint – I was astonished.’
This four-door supercar model followed in 2016. The nose was too low to make it front-engined; a rear engine would compromise space. But if it were electric… So, when the Mission E GT concept (which would become the Taycan) emerged in 2015, guess where its shape came from?
⊲ Martini Mixer 911 Vision Safari
Perhaps tired of Cayennes, Porsche created this working 911 crossover prototype in 2012, taking its inspiration from the works Safari rally 911s of the ’70s with long-travel suspension and o -road arches. It tested at Porsche’s gravel facility, and highrise 911 mules have been spotted…
Rally-inspired 911 prototype even included a cooling shelf for sweaty crash helmets between stages