If the idea of driving a hybrid conjures up images of creeping along snail-like in the slow lane while the real cars roar past you, prepare to have your preconceptions shattered by the Porsche 918 Spyder, a hybrid that’ll give you real charge.

The 918 is a plug-in hybrid that combines a high-performance engine––a 4.6-liter V8 that puts out 570 horsepower––with two electric motors, one on the front axle and one in the driveline, acting on the rear wheels, for a combined power figure of 770 horsepower. Top speed is a claimed 200 mph with all three units on the boil, or 90 mph on just the electric motors.

The 918 is underpinned by a double-wishbone front axle with an optional electro-pneumatic lift system; electro-mechanical power steering; and a multi-link rear axle with an adaptive electro-mechanical system for individual rear-wheel steering. It’s almost enough to make the carbon fiber-reinforced monocoque seem ho-hum.

Porsche engineers are trying to hit the ball out of the park with the 918 by combining high performance and low fuel consumption. Early tests of prototypes have done nothing to convince them they haven’t succeeded. The 918 Spyder is planned for production at the end of September 2013, with the first customer deliveries currently scheduled for the United States late in 2013.

Every Real Car Guy with a pulse has at some point said, “Man, I’d give my right arm to drive an exotic sports car like a Lamborghini or a Ferrari!” despite the impracticality of sacrificing a limb you’d need to drive the car in the first place. But thanks to Gotham Dream Cars’ Dream Car Sprint, you don’t need surgery to slide behind the wheel of a Lamborghini Gallardo or a Ferrari F430––a hundred bucks will do the trick.

There’s a trick to the trick, however, and that’s a limited amount of time at the controls––five minutes if you take your time (but where’s the fun in that?)––and you can drive only on an autocross track laid out in the parking lot of the New Jersey Meadowlands stadium. You get three laps at the wheel or, if you’re under 21, in the passenger seat while a professional driver does his best to scare the wits out of you.

You don’t need special insurance, and you don’t even need to know how to drive a stick, since the cars are equipped with semi-automatic gearboxes. And so you can prove to your buddies that you really did redline a Ferrari, your driving experience will be captured on video by two cameras, one facing the track and the other recording the smile of delight/look of terror on your face.

Right now the Dream Car Sprint is taking reservations only from people who have purchased coupons from Groupon, TravelZoo, and other daily deal sites. That’s also the only way to get the $100 ride. Gotham Dream Cars will be opening up reservations to non-coupon holders soon for $249, which is still a smokin’ deal for tossing an exotic Italian sports car around an autocross course.

Former co-worker and now friend John Huffman recently wrote a spectacular story called “The 100 Worst Cars of All Time.” In response, I wrote the following note to him.

John, loved your article. Work like that is why the New York Times picked you and not me to be a contributor. Not that I’m bitter or anything. Tell NYT Senior Editor Greg Brock, and former co-worker at the Daily Mississippian I said “Hey.”

However, beating up on cars from dead brands (and non-advertisers)—Trabant, Geo, Eagle, Austin, Pontiac—is like having a top Southeastern Conference college football team play, well, any other school. (The only way an SEC team will lose a BCS Championship Game is when it plays another SEC school. Do California schools still play football?)

Allow me to add some big boys to John's list:

Ferrari 348: This was an evil-handling witch thanks to bumpsteer caused by poor suspension design. It was the only car I've driven that snapped sideways on a (ever so slightly bumpy) straightaway. That was disconcerting because I was going 140 mph. (I caught it, or else we wouldn’t be talking.)

Ferrari F355: This was a slightly less evil-handling evolution of the 348. Either Ferrari put so much anti-lift in the rear suspension that it picked the rear tires off the ground when cornering forces caused the car to slow slightly, or its Bridgestones’ belt package was so stiff that their tread wouldn’t conform to the pavement during hard cornering. Or both. In a right-hander on the Las Vegas road course, the F355 snapped from a near-perfect free (fronts sliding only slightly more than rears) condition to “Oh Fudge” loose. When I cranked in opposite lock to catch the sliding tail, the car slowed enough to allow the rears to regain traction. Since I had the wheel turned left to catch the slide, the Ferrari darted toward the concrete wall. No, I don’t know how I caught that one. More...

Justin Wilson describes his 2004 Porsche 911 GT3 as a racecar with manners. He’s navigated hillclimbs, and ripped around on tracks and lapping events in this polite little Porsche, so when he heard about the Spectre 341 Challenge Hill Climb, “I just had to do it,” he said. “It was just too good to be true.”

Justin Wilson, 10th Place: 3:33.5

The GT3 didn’t disappoint, despite this being the first time for Wilson and geographically quite different from hillclimbs through forests in Washington. Wilson made the 341 club on the second day of the Challenge by nearly 8 seconds.

There’s not much you have to do to a GT3 in terms of performance, so Wilson concentrated on safety upgrades: roll bar, racing seats and harnesses, brake enhancements.

Going fast has been a pursuit Wilson takes seriously. The general contractor from Seattle has gone fast on jet skis, go-karts and SCCA events. But, he admitted he underestimated the 5.2-mile, roughly paved, off-camber Geiger Grade from Virginia City, Nev. to the historical Comstock Lode mining area.

“It was harder than I thought,” he said. “I researched it, watched videos. It looks flat and wide in those videos.” Flat and wide will never be used in the same Wilson sentence with “Spectre 341.” The organizers gave newbies a trip up the grade in an RV. That trip plagued Wilson throughout Spectre 341 Eve. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Wilson didn’t crack the 3:41 time the first day. The course went away after 11 a.m., too slick for someone trying to learn the course and go fast at the same time. But the second run on the second day, he knew he’d cracked the code. Like any good racer, he figured he could go even faster, but his next lap was red flagged. By the time he got back on the course, it was too slick to better his 3:33.5 time. That’ll have to wait until next year when he comes back with lighter wheels, wider tires, more rear wing and front splitter—in other words, with more grip.

“It’s a cool fraternity,” Wilson said of the group of drivers that took the Challenge. He grew up watching Lou Gigliotti race. “He was my hero,” he said. “And I was in the same race with him.” The two will meet up again in Portland for an event.

Imagine this: You’re cruising along in the left lane of a freeway at 60 mph. Up ahead, a car darts into your lane and appears to stop. Oh, fudge, you think, he’s coming my way! If you had a police radar gun, you’d discover he’s coming at you at 58 mph in your lane.

When you’re traveling 180 mph on Germany’s autobahn, that’s what it feels like to approach a car traveling 100 kilometers per hour (62 mph) in the same direction as you. Fortunately for me, and the Trabant driver who pulled out to pass a slow truck, the Porsche Turbo I was driving had wonderful brakes—or someone else would be writing this article.

I imagined the autobahn as straight-to-the-horizon, smooth-as-glass and wider-than-the-Mississippi. I’ve traveled a few sections of it and much is closer to the curvy and bumpy Hutchison River Parkway in the Bronx or Interstate 70 from Denver to the Eisenhower Tunnel. Much of it is narrower than U.S. Interstate specs. In places, concrete dividers make it impossible to look far enough ahead in left-hand turns. “If there’s a truck tire tread, a deer or stopped car ahead, I’m gonna hit it without getting to the end of ‘Oh, Scheiße!” I said to myself one time. Did I lift off the accelerator? No.

The Germans tried to warn me with banners on overpasses that said Reisen Nicht Rasen. (I hope that’s the correct spelling: It’s hard to take notes at 180 mph.) I am told it means "traveling not racing." I ignored it.