The LMP1 car is for the road that never was.
A year ago Porsche surprised car enthusiasts with the unveiled of many concept cars that had been secretly kept under wraps for a while. The lineup included a Safari version of the 911 and Macan, as well as an minivan. It was incredible. The 919 Street was perhaps the most fascinating.
The electrified hypercar is intended to be a road-legal version of the Le Mans-winning LMP1 racer. It was designed in 2017 with the same hybrid setup of the track-only 919. YouTube sensation Supercar Blondie was able to spend time with the machine after Porsche shipped it all the way from Germany to Dubai for this video.
This is not a car in itself. As the project was abandoned, it’s a full-size clay model. There are no plans to produce a production version. The Porsche 919 Street will not be the next hypercar, which is unfortunate because it would have been a huge crowd pleaser. We’re sure the Stuttgart peeps had good reasons to not pursue the project further.
It would have been a lot of work to adapt the hybrid powertrain to a road car, given emissions regulations and reliability concerns. Mercedes-AMG can tell you all about the challenges it faced to fit the Formula 1 engine of Lewis Hamilton’s car in the 1 hypercar. It takes approximately 45 minutes for the LMP1-spec engine to start up. This is not ideal for a road car.
The Carrera GT, like the 959 before it, will make it worthwhile to wait for the next flagship car. We expect even more electrification than the 918 Spyder and would not be surprised if the internal combustion engine is completely scrapped, given Porsche’s EV push.