First Drive: Porsche Mission R Review

On one level, the Porsche Mission R is just another concept car. Apart from a model used for exhibiting at motor shows, there’s only one real, functioning car and you’re looking at it. There will not be another. Like all concepts, it is a vision of a future that no-one can accurately predict, either in what it will look like or when it will arrive. So no big deal then.

But then there’s the other level. The one that knows Porsche doesn’t do simple concept cars without genuine intention to make something of them. Taking the most recent and relevant example, in 2015 Porsche whipped the covers off its Mission E concept and if you can spot the difference between that concept and the Taycan that followed it into production four years later, you have a commendably keen eye.

So what, precisely, is the Mission R? All Porsche will admit to is that it’s a vision of an all-electric customer racing car of the future. But should you look at its dimensions, its proportions and packaging, you would indeed be forgiven for concluding it is also saying no small amount about how an EV version of the next generation Cayman and Boxster might be realised and, whisper it, maybe even the 911 itself.

Looks mean, doesn’t it? Concept cars are meant to be beautiful, one more clue to the fact that this is a concept in name alone. It started life as a current 718 Cayman which was then pushed, pulled, coaxed and cajoled into the form you see here – shorter in length but longer in wheelbase, lower and much wider. Indeed we understand that if you to strip it back to the bare shell only the very centre section would now have anything in common with the car from which it was ostensibly derived. Instead it looks like what it really is: a state of the art racing car all the way from its jutting chin spoiler at the front to the enormous rear wing and scarcely smaller diffuser at its rear.

Squat in profile with huge intakes ahead of the rear wheels to provide cooling blasts of air to the all-electric powertrain, the eye is drawn to the light system on the roof, designed to advise those outside the car whether it is safe to approach. Essentially if there is a green light showing, it’s good to touch and climb aboard, if red it’s probably best to keep well away. Simple five leaf clover wheels are covered by suitably enormous Michelin slick tyres.

It would have been so easy to shovel a Taycan powertrain into the Mission R and leave it as that. After all, it’s only a concept… That’s not what Porsche did at all.

The base structure is now carbon-fibre, strong enough for the car not to need an additional roll cage. Its body panels are made from natural fibre-reinforced plastic. The 82kW battery pack sits directly behind the driver (unlike the Taycan where it resides under the car) and provides an essentially mid-mounted powertrain, like a Cayman. Its energy flows to front and rear electric motors which, like the battery are directly cooled by oil flowing over them, rather than by water in jackets around them. The system saves weight, is more efficient and allows the car to continue to generate maximum power for the entire 25-40 minute life of a single charge. The car comes with 900 volt architecture, more even than that found in the Taycan and a great distance from the 400 volt systems found in the vast majority of electric road cars. Capable of charging at up to 350kW, Porsche says a charge from 5-80 per cent can take as little as 15 minutes. When braking regeneratively, it can charge the battery at an extraordinary 800kW.

Power finds its way to all four wheels via two straight-cut gearboxes, which do without the second speed found in then Taycan transmission. These gearboxes, as well as the electric motors and pulse-controlled inverters are identical.

Because there is no lattice of roll cage tubes to negotiate, climbing aboard the Mission R is easier by a distance than an equivalent Porsche GT racer, like a Cayman GT4 or 911 Cup Car. You sit snug in a single piece seat and pull the controls towards you. The steering wheel looks terrifyingly complex but it’s not, at least not today. They just needed a wheel so pinched one from a 911 RSR Le Mans race, 99 per cent of whose controls are not needed for a short stint around the purpose-built track at the Porsche Experience Centre outside Los Angeles.

In place of an interior mirror there’s a very effective camera system which can also play you videos of Porsche racing exploits while you wait for the command to proceed. Even though nets have been drawn across you left and right to stop your arms flailing about in the event of a really enormous accident, it actually feels quite airy and welcoming in here, and quite unlike the often claustrophobically snug cockpits of GT3 racers. There are paddles on the wheel because it’s from a racing car, but they don’t work. There are of course only two pedals and all you need to do to make it move is turn one switch on the wheel and press the one on the right.

However before you can do any of this, before even you can get into it, you must sit through a 45 minute safety briefing on how to get out of it, in a very big hurry if needed. Three situations need to be catered for. First, the car simply fails to proceed. In which case, sit tight. On no account try to get out, and on no account start pressing buttons trying to fix it. The second scenario is more serious and involves you getting the hell out as fast as humanly possible because, say, the car is on fire. The third scenario is, if you can believe it, more serious still: the electricity that usually courses through its core has got out, the whole car is now ‘live’ and if you touch both it and the ground at the same time, well let’s leave what happens next to your imagination. So you have to perform a ‘KERS jump’ which involves leaping clear of the car and making sure you find mid-air with every millimetre of your body before falling onto the tarmac. Obviously the chances of this happening to even a prototype like this are vanishingly small, because if there was the slightest risk Porsche would not allow a journalist anywhere near it, but better safe than sorry.

The first surprise comes before the end of the first straight. You know that key EV attribute of total silence? Not this one: the sounds of the electric motors, those gearboxes and front and rear limited-slip differentials are shockingly loud, even through a thick Arai helmet, balaclava and ear plugs.

So how fast is it going to be? Well, in qualifying mode it has 1,088PS (800kW), of which 653PS (480kW) goes through the rear wheels alone, enough to propel the Mission R to 62mph in less than 2.5 seconds and on a top speed of 186mph. We’re not using it all today, but even with the 680PS (500kW) available in ‘race’ mode, this 1,500kg car is still shockingly rapid. A torque figure is not provided but it’s clearly massive and if you try to dump it all onto cold tarmac from rest, you can make even four vast Michelin slicks chirrup. But once they grip, you go.

The straights are short at the Experience Centre so apart from the briefest hiatus when you hit the speed limiter Porsche has imposed to protect their €8 million one off prototype, your body is never not being subjected to quite brutal forces. First you are buried in your seat, then you are flung into your belts. You try to detect the point at which regenerative braking hands over to those enormous ceramic discs but you can’t: the process is as seamless as I’ve experienced in the best road car, except you’re shedding speed at approximately twice the rate.

Then you’re into the corners. The aero on the Mission R is designed to be active but the DRS on the rear wing is not yet enabled so it’s left in a high downforce setting which is probably quite sensible. Sensible too is the decision to put a more than race-optimal amount of drive through the front wheels, for this is a car whose front to rear torque split can be whatever you choose and as easily adjustable on the move as is brake balance on a normal racing car. So right now it understeers quite a bit, but only once you’ve pushed through the mighty amount of mechanical grip on offer and tried hard to forget the value of what you’re driving. The steering is light, accurate, very direct and slightly lacking in feel. But if you find yourself winding on more lock to counteract the nose’s desire to peel away from the apex, it’s far better just to lift off the throttle for an instant: it snaps the nose straight and you’d don’t need to worry about the motors falling off the boil because they always give everything they have, the instant they’re asked for it.

The Mission R is a fascinating and important car. An all-electric racer capable already of putting in a lap time comparable to that of a 911 Supercup race car. It also provides a tantalising glimpse into a possible future for some of the most coveted sportscars of all. And perhaps all that could be predicted before Porsche let a handful of journalists slip behind its wheel. That an electric race car could also be so much fun was harder to guess. It gives hope not only for the one make racer it will undoubtedly spawn, but the rather more important and relevant road cars that will benefit from it too.